Draw PokerThere are many forms of draw poker and I will have something to say about several of them, but there are a few considerations that apply to every form of draw poker and I will discuss those first. 1. The draw. If your object is merely to improve your hand, there is no question that you are best off making the maximum draw: that is, three cards when you have a pair, or two cards when you have three of a kind. That does not answer the entire question, however. Many times your object will not be simply to improve your hand. Perhaps you will need some specific degree of improvement, and perhaps it will be more important to deceive the other players than to improve your hand. First, consider the case in which you need some specific degree of improvement. Suppose you know, no matter how, that you need two very high pairs—preferably aces up—to have a chance of winning the pot. You have a pair, but it isn't high enough, even if you catch another pair. Your three unmatched cards include an ace. This is a classic case—should you draw three cards to the pair or should you draw two cards to the pair and the ace kicker? If you hold the ace kicker, the odds are only about 4 to 1 against your getting aces up or better; if you do not hold the ace kicker, the odds are about 51/2 to 1 against your getting aces up or better. This is one of the rare cases in which it pays to hold a kicker. But you have to be quite sure that aces up, specifically, is the hand you want. Every so often, when you do make aces up by holding the kicker, your opponent will fill his full house and ruin you (this will happen almost precisely once in twelve times) and your three-card draw will give you about ten times as good a chance of making an even better hand and beating him on those few occasions. Holding the ace kicker is almost the only case I know in which a special draw has a mathematical advantage over the customary draw, and even here I know many good poker players who would rather draw three cards to the pair and take their chances on the many added opportunities to draw a still better hand, three of a kind or a full house or even four of a kind. Now suppose your purpose is not to improve but to keep the opponents guessing. This case arises chiefly when your original hand is probably better than any hand another player will draw. The simplest possible example, but probably the least useful, would arise when you are dealt four of a kind. (It is the least useful example because it will happen so seldom.) You have a choice between drawing one card and standing pat. Your decision depends entirely upon the betting before the draw. If the betting includes two or three raises, and you think there are strong hands out against you, your best chance is to stand pat. You will then be figured for a straight, since straights constitute well over 50 percent of all the pat hands that are dealt. A player who makes a high straight, a flush, or a full house will surely call a bet, will usually stand a raise, and with the better hands will reraise and then call your second raise. However, if you are up against weak hands before the draw and have simply raised once, you are better off to draw one card. You will then get a call on two high pair, a possible raise on three of a kind, and tremendous action on a full house, especially if it is a high one. As I said, knowledge of how to play a pat four of a kind isn't going to be of much moment in your practical poker play. Knowledge of how to draw to three of a kind is going to be of tremendous importance. If there were not so many exceptions (poker being a game of infinite variety) I would say flatly that for tactical purposes one card should always be drawn to three of a kind even though mathematics favors the two-card draw. Very seldom do you have a chance to play three of a kind any differently from two pairs before the draw. Getting called after the draw may depend largely on making the other players think your hand was two pair rather than three of a kind going in. A one-card draw represents a special advantage in draw poker, and any player who draws one card and is in any kind of good position will find the other players checking to him, giving him the maximum opportunity to make the best decision. The important things to remember about three of a kind are these: Unless you have more than three opponents, your hand will probably be best at the showdown even if you do not improve it. While a two-card draw gives you a much better chance to make four of a kind and a slightly better chance to show some improvement, in most hands it would not matter if you drew one card, or two cards, or stood pat, you would still win. Therefore the draw to three of a kind is partly a matter of your individual tactics and your recent history in the game. If you have not represented the hand too strongly before the draw, and if you are a player who has been detected once or twice recently drawing two cards to a pair and a kicker, then the two-card draw will be tactically the best. Your chance of improvement is at the maximum and you are likely to get called by players who suspect you of bluffing. If you have been called in one or two pat-hand bluffs, that is an admirable time to stand pat on three of a kind. They will probably win without improvement and you may get a call. But year in, year out, without background, the one-card draw will work out best. A four-card straight or flush cannot possibly represent any problem. You draw one card. Ninety-nine percent of the times, two pairs represent no problem either; you draw one card. There is a very slight exception in the case of two pairs. If you have two pairs that will probably win without improvement (for example, against one or two players who have not represented any great strength before the draw) and if you think they might suspect you of a pat-hand bluff, you might consider occasionally standing pat on your two high pairs, which should be no lower than queens up. As a matter of fact, it is good tactics to do this occasionally to give variety to your game and to keep the opponents guessing both when you have a genuine pat hand and when you are trying a pat-hand bluff; but be sure to treat this as a method of bluffing and not as a legitimate method of playing poker. Like anything unnatural in poker, it will not win if employed too often. Aces occupy a unique place in poker. Against one opponent and often against two, aces have a better-than-even chance to win unimproved. If you are the last man to speak before the draw, and two other players are in, and you have a pair of aces, you might consider simply staying in and drawing one card. This is especially effective as the aftermath of two or three conspicuous cases in which you have drawn to a straight or flush possibility and have failed to fill. If both the players before you draw three cards, you draw one and bet; you may get a suspicious call from one of the three-card draws, even if he does not improve. The odds against your improving aces on a one-card draw is less than 5 to 1 against you, while the odds are 21/2 to 1 against you even if you drew three cards. Often such a mathematical disadvantage can be sustained in the interests of better tactics. Freak draws. In one sense, these should hardly be worth discussing. If you have to make a freak draw, you shouldn't have been in there in the first place. Nevertheless, occasions do arise (some of them legitimately) when you have to make a freak draw, and the following general advice can be given: A five-card draw is incredible, even when (as in many blind-opening games) you got 7 to 1 odds to go in against one opponent. It is better to draw four to an ace, if the rules of the game permit a four-card draw, than to draw three to an ace-king. It is better to draw two cards to three cards in sequence if A-K-Q, or K-Q-J, or Q-J-1O, than to draw two cards to a possible flush such as J-8-7 of diamonds. One of the possibilities is that you will make one high pair or two pairs and that they will win, while the chances of making the actual straight or flush are almost too remote to be considered. The draw of one card to an inside straight is almost always wrong. The odds against making it are almost 11 to 1. Few are the hands that do not offer at least as good odds on making a single high pair or two pairs if you simply throw away all the unlikely cards and draw four cards to the highest card or three cards to some freak combination such as a king and jack of the same suit. The inside straight is justly notorious in poker. Almost the only case in which you draw one card to an inside straight is the case in which you hold something like 9-8-6-5 or lower and know that even pairing your high cards will not give you a chance to win. Even so, you can draw four cards to your highest card and have a l-in-12 chance to make two pair or better—the same chance you have when you draw one card to an inside straight. In the closing pages of this book are tables of the mathematical odds that tell your exact chances on most of these combinations. I have paid no attention here to the question of drawing when there is a wild card in the game, such as the bug or the joker, because all such cases will be taken up separately. 2. The strength of your hand. The first thing to remember in draw poker, and in nearly any poker game, is that the best hand going in is usually the best hand coming out. The next thing to remember is that the more players who stay against the best hand, the fewer pots it will win but the more money it will win. The sole exception to this is the case of two low pairs, a special hand that I will discuss separately. The strength of your hand in draw poker depends entirely on the number of players who have not dropped. This has proved to be a difficult concept for many poker players and I will try to explain it in this way: Mathematicians have worked out the hand that is likely to be highest in a game of any given number of players, for example eight players, or four players, or only two players. When a player before you has dropped out, from the mathematical standpoint you can forget that he was ever in the game. Consider only the players who are yet to speak. As a simple example, in an eight-handed game of draw poker it takes two aces to have a better-than-average chance of being the high hand; but if you are the seventh man, and the first six have already dropped, and you have only the eighth man to contend with, the mathematics of the situation become precisely the same as if you were playing in a two-handed game and the first six players had never existed. In that case, two deuces or an A-K high will have a better-than-even chance of being the high hand. If you have absorbed that, you can follow the table on the next page, which tells what you have to have to have a good chance against any given number of players who are yet to be heard from:
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