Five Card Draw Strategy

Deciding to Play a Hand

Sometimes in draw poker a concept called "openers" is employed. It means there is a minimum hand that will justify an opening bet. In home games it is invoked as a rule so that people do not play garbage hands just to play them. In casinos it is rare to encounter a "rule" about openers. But every good player has an established principle. For example, after a deal, if the hand does not contain at least a pair of jacks, the player will check (in an ante game) or fold in a game with blinds. If the player checks, and someone else makes a bet, he or she will probably fold.

Each player has his or her own level of comfort. Some people don't want to throw away even a low pair. Others might not bet jacks, but would bet queens or kings. It is a very individual decision. Many people will not open with less than, say, kings, but will call another player with something lower, like a pair of tens or better. The lower one's standards, the "looser" the play. By keeping the bar high, the player is "playing tight."

Sticking to the standards is admired by some, who call it "disciplined" play. The problem is that a consistency will soon be diagnosed by the other players. They will be able to rely on the "standards" to the point that the player just might as well say out loud at the table, "I have jacks or better." Thus it is always a good idea to bend the standards one way or another, just to keep them guessing.

The absence of strict standards (or lack of "disciplined" play) is just as easily identifiable. When a player opens with a bet, draws three cards and then checks, it may turn out that the "opening" was garbage or a low pair. If this tendency is known, later on, when you hold a high pair, and the undisciplined player is staying in the game, it will probably be worth pushing him or her. Chances are good that the pair in the opponent's hand will not beat yours.

Throughout a game these "standards" for opening or calling can go up or down with the dynamics of the play. Sometimes a weaker player is running low on chips and starts betting in a more desperate way. That would be a good time to become a more aggressive player, to go in for the kill.

Additionally, a player may violate the standards selectively, if justified by some other circumstance at the table. For example, if everyone has checked to the blind, and the blind makes a minimum bet, hoping everyone else will fold, a player might call with an ace high, just to prevent larceny of the pot. Even though the math might not justify trying to draw to a high pair or better, the bet is worth it. Why? Not because it has a positive expectation; in fact, it might not. The calling player has made a point with the would-be pot thief by sending a message of toughness.

If everyone checks around the table, the cards are re-dealt, the antes are made again, and now the pot should be twice as fat as before. Sometimes three or four hands can be thrown in like that in a row. Eventually, someone gets a playable hand or the pot gets large enough to cause some greedy player to try to steal it or some careful player to see that the pot odds justify a fairly long shot.

Much attention is spent on the opening strategy, as it is the single most important financial decision in five-card draw, and probably in all poker. A "disciplined" player will not find himself or herself in a hand that should not have been played. For example, if someone asks for four or five cards in the draw, it is fair to think to oneself, "Why is that person in this hand?" The more you can have that thought about the other players, and the less you can have it about yourself, the more the game should be going your way.

A consequence of this principle is that the "disciplined" player is also very patient. The probability of receiving a pair in the deal - any pair - is 42.3%. The chance of receiving an even better hand in the deal is only 7.62%, which is about 13:1 against you. Thus, if the "standard" is "jacks or better," it means a number of hands with low pairs or nothing in them will be checked or folded and not played. A little less than 80% of the time a player can expect that the hand dealt to him or her will not meet "the standard." By lowering the threshold to, say, nines, the chances of being dealt a playable hand rise to about 3 out of 10.

The trade-off is clear, whether the game is played with blind bets or with antes: It is always cheaper to sit out a losing hand than to play it.

Learn to Draw

The "normal" draw is for two or three cards. For example, if you have been dealt a pair, then it is common to draw three cards to try to improve the hand further. Improvements would include one or two more of the cards comprising the pair, or perhaps a second pair or three of a kind. Rarely one will get a third card for a trip plus another pair, winding up with a full house.

If you have been dealt a trip, is would be normal to hold on to the trip and draw two cards, looking for improvement. Improvement could come in the form of the fourth card of the rank held, or as a pair of something else, for a full house. These are fairly rare occurrences.

If you have been dealt four to a straight or flush (called a mini-straight and a four-flush, respectively), then it would make sense to draw just one card. "Draw hands" is the term used for these hands that show promise, but have little winning power as they are.

Requesting four cards is a sign of a garbage hand. The usual thinking is to hold on to a high card if you have one, in hopes of maybe pairing it up in a four-card draw.

Requesting five cards is usually allowed, but in some casinos, a request for five cards results in receiving four in your turn, and then the fifth only if there are cards left over after everyone else has completed his or her draws, to make sure the other players are accommodated first. (The bottom card is never given in a draw. If the deck is depleted, the sloughed cards are collected, shuffled and reused.)

Drawing five is an act of desperation, and likely to generate a playable hand less than one time in five. Successfully bluffing after a five-card draw is next to impossible.

If no cards are requested, it means that the player has a "pat hand," one that is not subject to improvement. This could be four of a kind with a high kicker, or a flush, straight or full house. Since it is fairly easy to estimate a player's hand from the number of cards drawn, a form of bluffing is to ask for cards different from what the hand would normally require.

The most frequent maneuver like this is to ask for just two cards while holding back some high pair and maybe another high kicker, leading the others to think that perhaps you have trips.

Betting After the Draw

Having stayed in the game through the draw, a player may find that the others are betting aggressively and/or the draw was a disappointment. It is time to compare the cost of staying in with the cost of folding. Remember that the precise calculation, like any other risk in a matter of chance, is a comparison of the financial deal ("pot odds") with the real world situation ("true odds").

The financial deal is the reward if you win times your chance of winning. It is compared with the cost to play. If the expected win is $9.85 and it costs $10 to play, it is a bad deal. If the numbers were reversed, it would be a "good deal," but not by much.

Consider the following illustration:

You hold four cards in sequence, say 5-8. To be able to draw that last card, you need to bet $10 into a pot that has $80 in it. If you draw to a straight and get a 4 or a 9, you are certain that you will win the hand. If you do not, you are certain to lose it. Do you call or fold?

In draw poker, no other cards are visible besides those dealt to you. So the calculation of the physical probability is 8 divided by 47: the number of unseen 4's and 9's divided by the total number of unseen cards. That is 17%, a little better than 5:1 odds. The pot will have $90 in it if you call and win. Thus, the "expected value" of the pot is $15.32. The cost to play is $10. It makes sense to stay in the game and hope for a straight.

Note that if the pot had been only $50, it would have made more sense to fold, as the expected payoff would have been under $10 ($8.51 to be exact).

Another way to look at these same numbers is to note that the odds of a successful draw are 5:1, and the pot odds are 9:1, so the risk is worth taking, since the payoff is higher than the risk.

Do not forget that the winner does not necessarily have a strong hand, just a better hand than anyone else who takes him or her to a showdown. In the first round of betting the focus was on whether the cards were playable and how they might be able to improve. After the draw is complete for everyone, there is no more improvement. Everyone knows how many cards each person drew, and what the cards in his or her own hand have to say. To a degree, the betting in round one is no longer reliable, as the hands may have changed, hopes may have been dashed, and prayers may have been answered. The "semi-bluffer" will either have gotten the desired improvement, or not. (A semi-bluff is essentially betting as if the hand were strong, in the hope that it might prove to be strong after the draw.)

After the draw, with only five cards visible to each player, poker is again what it was in the 1830's, before board cards and draws and extra cards started floating around. Each person affirms a fact by moving chips -- or not. Whether the affirmation implicit in a move of chips is true or not is the puzzle each player must solve. The skilled player will identify and attack weakness and flee from opposing strength. The diagnosis involves some logic, and perhaps some intuition about what the cards might be. Only a little "objective" information is available to help resolve the puzzle:

If an opponent draws two cards and you draw three, the chances are that the opponent has three of something. It is possible that he or she is drawing two cards to a flush or straight, but that would be a mistake.

It is also possible that he or she has an ace or face card kicker, and is drawing only two cards, hoping for something to go with the kicker. That would also be a mistake. If the opponent is not a weak player, then he or she is either bluffing to feign a trip, or communicating that indeed the hand is three of a kind. If you are drawing three to a low pair, you should probably fold if you do not get the third card and if someone else bets afterwards (unless, of course, you confidently sniff out a bluff).

Naturally, if it doesn't cost anything to stay in the game (everybody checks), hang in there.

Next to knowing when not to play a hand at the beginning, the decision to fold, call or raise on the second round of betting is the most important financial decision in the game. It is based in large measure on one's evaluation of human nature.

Avoid Mistakes

A few situations will recur frequently. After playing a few hundred hands, you will not need to perform mental gymnastics to know what to do. However, a few moves are always goofs - plain and simple - and will wind up costing money if you stay in the game. For example, it is unfounded optimism to draw two cards to a straight or flush in almost any situation. The odds are over 20:1 against, so the pot would have to be very fat ever to justify taking a gamble.

Another mistake is drawing two cards to a pair, holding on to a kicker. This tactic reduces the chances of drawing the third card for a trip by more than it increases the chances of drawing a match for the kicker, and winding up with two pair. On a two card draw with a pair and a high kicker in the hand, the chances for hand improvement are about 27%, but two-thirds of this (18%) involves winding up with two pair. On a three card draw with just the pair held back, the chances for hand improvement are a little better, (over 28%), but almost half of it (about 13.5%) involves three of a kind or stronger hands. So it is always marginally better to draw three than two, unless there is some benefit in bluffing a trip.

Frequently newcomers will just miscalculate the pot odds. One of the dividends of experience in poker is in understanding the pot. Often newcomers are urged to play limit poker always in the same denomination, so that the "pot odds" will take on a familiar look. Eventually you will be able to calculate pot odds just by glancing at the chips. Experience also helps a player avoid other technical mistakes, like calling instead of folding, or vice versa. In every case, the odds of success on the draw compared with the pot odds will tell the whole story.

Another mistake has little to do with the math of calculating odds. It was only alluded to in the previous examples. This is the belief that if you successfully draw to the trip or straight or flush, or whatever, you will then go on to win the hand. Such an assumption is not always obvious or warranted. So, next to mistakes of probability, the second biggest error of inexperienced poker players is miscalculating the relative strength of competing hands.

Even seasoned pros get hammered from time to time when a full house of aces beats a full house of kings. But the experienced players rarely stay in a game with a high pair only to be beaten by a much stronger hand.