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Reading the Board: Advanced Low Board situations
For Basic Low Board situations, you can often just pick the two lowest cards in your hand and the 3 lowest on the board and that's your low. Sometimes you get counterfeited, and you have to pick the 2 lowest non-board pairing cards in your hand. But things start to get a little more confusing when there are multiple low cards. We need to modify our previous principle:
Here are some examples to practice determining what your best low hand is. For each question, answer it quickly like you would at the table before reading the answer.
Question 1: You have A234, the board is 23477. What is your low?
Answer 1: You two lowest cards that play are A2. You use the 347 from the board for A2347. Anyone with A5, A6, 56 has a better low, and anyone with A7, A3, or A4 ties you.
Question 2: You have A6KK, the board is 2345Q. What is your low? How good is it?
Answer 2: Your low is A6 from hand, with 234 on the board for A2346. Unfortunately, anyone with A2, A3, A4, A5 beats you. This raises an important point for low hands - your two lowest non-pairing cards make your personal best low, but to make the nut low, your cards must be lower than 5. This comes up frequently.
Question 3: You have 2346, the board is A3457. What is your low?
Answer 3: Your low is the 2 lowest cards in your hand that don't pair the board AND are 5 or lower. So 26 is not the best low you have - 23 is. So your 23 combines with A45 for the nutlow. But anyone with A2, 23, 24, 25 also has that same nut low.
Question 4: You have 45KK, the board is A2345. What is your low?
Answer 4: You have 45 to combine with the A23 on the board for the nut low. But anyone with any two non-pairing cards lower than 5 ties you: A2, A3, A4, A5, 23, 24, etc.
