What is a "Made Hand" in Poker?
You have a made hand when you (1) complete a straight or a flush draw or (2) improve a pair hand to something like a full house. Made hands are by no means invincible, but they have high positive expectations in terms of both pot odds and bet odds. Their common characteristic is that they have a high probability of winning the pot without further improvement. However, you will detect some caution in my recommendations for playing these hands because the vast majority of them are vulnerable to other players who may already beat you or are drawing to better hands. The issue is not so much statistical as it is psychological, in that a made hand usually doesn't assure you of a pot just yet. The critical factor in playing a made hand is to correctly monitor its strength based on the game you are playing and the circumstances of the hand.
Basic Strategy for Made Hands In most cases, a made hand will be the best hand currently at the table, and you will be betting for value. Your goal should be to build the pot fairly assertively by betting and raising. When you do this, don't shed a tear if some opponents fold. That's the way it has to be, because you have little to gain and much to lose by checking and allowing these players to draw free cards. If there are cards left to come, chances are that your made hand is vulnerable to being beaten or tied, which means that you are happy to thin out the number of opponents who could draw to better hands than yours. As for the players who stick around, you must punish them! You have to use this opportunity to take the chips of opponents who miss their draws or who play second or third-best hands the whole way down. Don't give away free cards, but look for opportunities to conceal your strength if you think it can win you more chips later. Made hands don't come very often, so when they do, you can't afford to miss the chance to extract a lot of money from them. Poker is largely about losing little amounts of money and winning big amounts; this is your chance to do the latter. Pressing your advantages is just as important to your end results as minimizing your losses. If you are playing a made hand strongly and you encounter a raiser, you are going to have to play some poker. You must carefully consider (1) what the raiser thinks you have and (2) the feasibility of the raiser having what he is representing. Take your time. With experience, you will occasionally get such a solid read on an opponent that you can re-raise with a vulnerable hand or confidently drop a strong one. Without a convincing read, however, the best course of action is generally to call the whole way down. Mathematically speaking, the pot odds near the end of an aggressively played fixed-limit hand are usually so large that you can't take the chance of folding a potential winner on a bluff. Having made hands beaten is expensive and painful, but it's cheaper in the long run than giving away entire pots.