This is a rule that needs to go away. It's original intent is good, to prevent soft-playing. In practice, with the exception of the Darvin Moon hand, I have only seen this rule enforced when the player in question misread their hand, and hadn't realized they had the nuts. Thus, instead of preventing soft-play, this rule just adds an additional penalty to the poor player who failed to bet or raise with the nuts, because they didn't know they had the nuts!

For example, a player sees a flop of 7h8d9c while holding the JhTh. They bet and get a couple of calls. The turn is the 8h, they bet again, still get a couple of calls. The river is the 9h, and when checked to, they check behind. They start to complain about the runout, and how they must be beat, AND after flopping the nuts. They table their hand, and are informed that they beat the full house(s) of their opponents, as they made a straight flush. And now we give them a penalty as well.

Rule wasn't a bad idea when it was first created, but experience has shown it to be a bad rule. Do away with it!

Thanks, Greg Raymer (FossilMan)

I just skimmed but I haven't seen anyone mention that this rule only makes sense HU or otherwise closing the action. (EDIT: Credit to BigBlue56 for pointing this out.) It's always OK to flat to go for an overcall.

AFAIK it also states unique nuts for some reason. But if you're closing the action I'm not sure what it matters in a single-way game. Split pot games are also a bit weird because you could be closing the action but still worried you're getting less than half the pot so it has to be the unique nuts in the high direction only.

Yep. Exactly this.

The only good thing I've seen out of this rule is that my friend who would be the last guy to raise trouble during a tournament gets to tell the story of how he got penalized at a WSOP event because he misread his hand. His story won't ever die, but the rule should.

If the rule is that TD's discretion applies, and if it needs to go away because penalties are too often given to players who made a simple mistake, then it would really be going away to protect players from overly eager TDs.

Which is a perfectly good reason for the rule to go away, just a sad reason and one distinct from the rule being bad as written (which it might also be). It's like TDs don't know what discretion is or that they truly have it. Maybe they are afraid of backlash. Either way, it doesn't give me confidence that the power is exercised in spots that aren't so explicitly called out in the rules.

It’s more accurate to say an unbeatable hand. Q9 is not the “nuts” in terms of being the best possible hand but it is an unbeatable hand since there is now no chance of quad queens. Based on this, there is no logical reason for a player not to bet/raise on the river if they are last to act.

On the other hand, I never liked any penalties being handed out for the nuts being on the board (Almost always referring to broadway on the board with no flush possibility).

Thanks for this. I hadn't actually thought about this argument much deeper than the poster you were replying to but I like your logic here.

Honestly the only times I can remember checking the nuts last to act have been super rare and in HU games where having reads on one player are relatively more important, and wider ranges are being played making overall hand reading more difficult, thus giving more value to the information.

In a heads up game, soft play is no longer a concern.