What is every hand worth on a 6 5 4 rainbow flop?

6 5 4 rainbow is what happens when the flop skips the glamour ranks entirely. Three straights are already possible, all of them built from cards most players fold, and with no flush draw in sight the battle is purely about who bothered to play the bottom of the deck. It is the mirror image of a broadway flop, and it humiliates exactly the hands a broadway flop rewards.

87 flops the nut straight, eight down to four, and sits alone at the top. 73, of all hands, makes the seven-high straight, and 32 completes the bottom one. Sixes, fives, and fours flopped sets, and pocket sevens are the sleeper: an overpair with an open-ended draw, they actually outperform pocket aces here. Top two pair with 65 rounds out the group doing serious work.

The bottom of the table reads like a preflop top-ten list. JT and T9, suited or not, are among the very worst hands on this flop, clear underdogs to two random cards, and AK is an underdog too. None of them have a pair, a live draw, or a realistic way to catch up, and high-card pedigree buys almost nothing on a board this low.

The trap is double-sided. With the big hands, it is refusing to give up: continuation betting AK into 6 5 4 and then talking yourself into three streets of it. With the little hands, it is under-raising. A flopped straight with 87 or a set of fours wants a big pot immediately, because nearly every turn card puts a scare into somebody. Low boards move money toward whoever admits fastest what the flop actually changed.