What is Effective Nuts in Poker?

The effective nuts is an objective term, meaning your hand may not be the best possible hand, but it’s effectively the best possible hand given the situation.

Example: Suppose your opponent raises preflop, you re-raise with and your opponent calls. The flop comes . Your opponent is unlikely to have raised and called a re-raise with exactly preflop, so you hold the effective nuts with your set of sevens.