Quads! Four-of-a-kind! It’s always an incredible feeling to flop one of the strongest hands in poker, but what are the odds behind making four-of-a-kind and how do we win the most money with it? Let’s dive into the math and strategy behind quads.
The Math Behind Flopping Quads in Poker
From a random starting hand in Hold ‘Em, you’ll flop quads about once in every 4,165 hands. While that’s rare, it’s not inconceivably rare or impossible. Over a large enough sample, quads will come around. For an online poker player, they may flop quads fairly frequently due to the volume of hands they are seeing on multiple poker tables at once. For a live poker player, seeing 4,165 hands takes a bit longer and the experience is less frequent (although perhaps more exciting).
Your odds of flopping quads are much higher if you start the hand with a pocket pair as opposed to an unpaired hand.
If you have a pocket pair:
- You’ll flop quads about 1 in 408 times
- That’s roughly 0.245%
If you have an unpaired hand:
- You’ll flop quads about 1 in 9,800 times
- That’s about 0.010%
Comparing those figures, a player rates to be around 24 times more likely to flop quads with a paired hand than an unpaired hand.
In Pot Limit Omaha, a player’s chances of flopping quads are obviously much higher. From a random PLO hand, it’s about 1 in 1,157 hands. If you were to start with a two-pair hand in PLO, your odds would jump to a whopping 1 in 188 hands, the equivalent of about six hours of live poker play.
How to Get Paid with Quads
While we’ve just noted the mathematical difficulty of flopping quads, getting your opponents to put money in the pot and pay you off can be a difficult endeavour as well. When considering strategies on how to play your flopped four-of-a-kind, there are a few key areas to focus on.
Board Texture
Flopping quads with A2 on AAA is much different than flopping quads with 88 on Q88. Always consider how much hand an opponent can really have on a given board, considering that you already have four-of-a-kind. Dream spots can occur when opponents make a full house using your four-of-a-kind cards and have no choice but to lose a huge pot.
Opponent Type
Are your opponents the straightforward type? Are they playing poker aggressively and bluffing frequently or are they more passive? Are they the type to represent that they have quads and run a multi-street bluff? I find that versus more aggressive opponents, I’m able to put in more money earlier in the hand with quads. These players are less likely to believe you’ve flopped a big hand and will continue wider. Against tighter poker opponents, using a strategy of delayed aggression while hoping for their hand to improve is often prudent.
Final Thoughts
Although rare, flopping four-of-a-kind is a memory that poker players do not forget. I have a vivid memory of one of those dream scenarios occurring where I flopped quads in a high-stakes cash game with 88 on Q88 and the turn was another Queen. All the money went in and my opponent naturally assumed we were chopping the pot with queens full of eights. Not that time though!
To try out your luck with landing quads in online poker, register with BetMGM Poker, and be sure to use the one-time poker welcome bonus code.
