How To Play Draw Poker

Not to be confused with Seven Card Stud, Seven Card Draw is a poker variant that closely resembles Five Card Draw. The only difference is that each player is dealt seven cards rather than five cards.

How To Play Straight Draw Poker
How To Play Double Draw Poker
How To Play Draw Poker

So what is a draw in poker? In poker, a drawing hand is when a player has an unmade hand that is not likely to be best on the current street but has the potential to “draw” to the best hand by the turn or river if a particular card comes. The most common draws that come to mind for most people is the flush draw or straight draw.
Seven Card Draw can either be played with antes or blinds. In the ante system, each player must place a small bet at the beginning of every hand. This bet is usually equal in size to 10% of the small betting limit. In a $10/$20 game, the antes would be $1.00.

Seven Card Draw is a relatively obscure variation but it’s still occasionally found in home games. Seven Card Draw was designed to address one of the biggest complaints players have of Five Card Draw: the game doesn’t have enough big hands.

How to play “Three Legged Race” Draw Poker A high/low triple-legged game, where the winner of the game is the first player to win three “legs”. At the end of each round, one leg is awarded to the player with the best hand at the table, ANOTHER leg awarded to the player with the lowest hand at the table. Five-card draw is the first poker game that many people learned. Players usually post an ante, receive five cards, and have a round of betting starting to the left of the dealer. Then each player may trade in cards for new ones to improve their hand. This is followed by a second round of betting.

In Seven Card Draw, the players may choose any five of their seven cards to create the best five card hand possible. In this version of draw poker, you’ll see strong hands more often and generate more betting action.

Antes and Blinds

Seven Card Draw can either be played with antes or blinds. In the ante system, each player must place a small bet at the beginning of every hand. This bet is usually equal in size to 10% of the small betting limit. In a $10/$20 game, the antes would be $1.00.

How To Play Straight Draw Poker

Other times, players can use the same blind system that Texas Hold'em uses. In the blinds system, the player to the left of the dealer posts the small blind, which is equal in size to half the minimum bet. The player to the left of the small blind posts the big blind, which is equal in size to one minimum bet.

In a $10/$20 game, the small blind would be $5 and the big blind would be $10.

Dealer

If a full time dealer is used in the game, a small button is used to represent the dealer’s position at the table. The dealer’s button moves one seat to the left at the beginning of each hand. The purpose of this is to denote position and to ensure each player pays the blinds once per orbit.

At the beginning of each hand, the dealer deals the cards face down, one at a time, beginning with the player to the left of the dealer and going clockwise around the table until each player has seven cards.

First Betting Round

After all the cards have been dealt, the players now have a round of betting. This round begins with the player to the immediate left of the dealer. This player may call, fold, or raise. All bets in this betting round are placed in increments of the low betting limit. In a $10/$20 game, each bet and raise would be placed in increments of $10.

The action then continues clockwise around the table with each player having the same choices. If any player raises, the other players must at least match that raise to stay in the hand. The action continues clockwise until all the bets have been matched.

Draw

After the first betting round, the players may now discard up to four cards and receive new cards in exchange. Players may also “stand pat” and not draw any cards if they so choose.

Second Betting Round

The second betting round begins with the first remaining player to the left of the dealer. This time all bets are placed in increments of the high betting limit. In a $10/$20 game, all bets would now be placed in $20 increments.

The first player may bet, check, or fold and then the betting continues clockwise around the table. Once again, if any player bets or raises, each of the other players must either match that amount or fold their hands.

Showdown

Any players remaining after the last betting round now show their hands. The player with the best five card poker hand, using any combination of the seven cards in his hand, wins the pot. If there is only one player left after the last betting round, that player may take the pot without showing his hand.

There are two different types of post-flop hands that have value in poker: made hands and drawing hands. Made hands are more straightforward than draws and typically much easier to play. In fact, learning what a drawing hand is and how to play it is an often misunderstood yet extremely important component of mastering Texas Hold’em or any poker game for that matter.

So what is a draw in poker? In poker, a drawing hand is when a player has an unmade hand that is not likely to be best on the current street but has the potential to “draw” to the best hand by the turn or river if a particular card comes. The most common draws that come to mind for most people is the flush draw or straight draw.

There are varying strengths of drawing hands ranging from a gutshot straight draw (4 potential outs) all the way up to having a powerful combo draw such as a straight draw that includes a flush draw (up to 15 outs).

What Is an Out?

An out is a potential future card that could be dealt on the turn or river that has the potential of improving a poker hand. Usually, outs are associated with cards that would likely improve a player to the winning hand. For example, if you held Ace King and the board was 952, then all Aces and Kings left in the deck would be considered “outs” since either of them would make you top pair.

What Is a Flush Draw?

A flush is when your hole cards and the community cards include 5 of the same suit. Therefore, a flush draw is when one or both of your hole cards have the possibility of making a flush on the next street.

Examples Two Card Flush Draws

Not all flush draws are created equally. The strongest flush draws are when you either have two of the same suit in your hand and two on the board, or have the Ace of one suit in your hand and 3 of the same suit on the board. Having a single card flush draw that is not to the nuts (the best hand possible) is often a sucker hand to play due to reverse implied odds.

What is Reverse Implied Odds?

Reverse implied odds means that you might improve your hand and still lose to a better draw. The weaker your flush draw the more likely it is that reverse implied odds is an issue. Therefore, unless both cards in your hand are suited, you generally do not want to invest a lot of chips chasing a flush draw. As a rule, straight draws tend to have fewer issues with reverse implied odds.

What Is a Straight Draw?

A straight draw is when one or both of your hole cards allow your hand to make a 5 card straight on the next street. The most common straight draw that most people are familiar with is the open-ended straight draw. This is where one or both of your cards are in between the community cards in such a way that you have 8 potential outs to make a straight.

While reverse implied odds problems are typically not that common with straight draws, it is still possible. If your cards are at the bottom of the potential straight and there are hands that can make a bigger straight, this is known as having the “dummy” end of the straight. The best straight draw to have is when all 8 cards are to the nuts, typically seen as open-ended straight draws.

Are There Any Other Drawing Hands?

Yes. In fact, any time you have a hand that has an obvious route to becoming the best hand on either the Turn or River, it is technically a drawing hand. Examples include:

Bottom pair, which has 5 outs to make trips or two pair
A gutshot straight draw, which has 4 potential outs to a straight
A Backdoor flush draw, which can make a flush if the correct suit comes runner runner on the turn and river
See the image below for examples of the above hands, respectively shown in the same order as written.

Weak Draws

The possibilities are endless. What is really important is in determining which draws have enough value to continue with and then choosing the correct lines to maximize the expected value. Mastering tactical play in these spots takes lots of time and effort.

What Are the Odds of Making a Draw by the Turn or River?

Understanding the odds of drawing hands is one of the basic fundamental concepts of texas hold’em. The probability of completing a draw is based on the number of outs you have. Here is a poker outs probability chart showing the odds of making a few of the common draws on the turn or river, based on the number of outs.

An Easy Math Shortcut to Help You Figure out the Odds

If you can remember the numbers 4 and 2, you can figure out your approximate chances of hitting a flopped draw on the turn or by the river. For your chance of improving by the river, multiply your expected number of outs by 4. For your chance of improving on the turn, multiply your expected number of outs by 2. That’s it, easy peasy.

Of course, the numbers won’t be exactly correct and are going to be off by around 1% most of the time. Even so, it’s close enough to make intelligent decisions at the table. Let’s test it out, just to be sure. Say you have an open-ended straight draw and are curious how often you will hit your straight by the river. Since an open ender is 8 outs, we multiply that by 4 and end up with 32. If you check the chart above, you will notice that the actual number is 31.5%; pretty dang close. Feel free to test a few other possibilities to get the hang of it.

Why Are Drawing Hands so Valuable?

Now, let’s briefly get a bit more advanced and discuss the theory of why drawing hands are so valuable. In short, it’s because they tend to do very well against the strong made hands and have much better equity against the nuts (the strongest hand possible) or near nuts, even on the turn.

Equity is basically what percentage of the pot your hand is going to win if everyone involved in the pot happened to get all-in right now at this very moment on this street. If you compare the equity of a made hand like top pair versus the nuts, you will see that that type of hand has very little chance of winning by the river. On the other hand, your run of the mill low flush draw will usually beat the stone cold nuts more than 1 in 3 times by the river.

As an example, 32s, with a two card flush draw, has over a 33% chance of winning the pot by the river versus QJo on an AKT, 36% if your opponent doesn’t share a suit with you. See the results below, as shown in a program called Pokerstove, which calculates raw flop equity based on known hole cards and the board.

Now, look at how top pair does versus the same hand.

Only 7.5% equity! Now you see the full impact of draws. Versus an opponent who likely has a really strong range, it is much better to have a draw than a medium strength hand, like top pair.

While it’s better to have a draw over a made hand when up against a really strong hand, the real power of a draw is the fact that sometimes your opponent(s) will fold and you take down the pot uncontested. This extra money you win the times that you get a fold is known as fold equity.

The Power of Fold Equity

The entire reason a draw is profitable has nothing to do with actually making your hand. Even most of the stronger draws will have less than 50% equity on the flop. If no one ever folded, then it would be virtually impossible to show a profit with a draw. Take a look at this screenshot of the graph from my recent play while holding either a flush draw or straight draw.

Hold’em Manager Graph Showing My Results With Flopped Draws

As you can see, I won a lot of money with my draws but would have been a loser if it were not for the non-showdown earnings I achieved via fold equity. These “red line” earnings were made when I bet and my opponents folded. This is known as “Semi-Bluffing.”

What is a Semi Bluff?

How To Play Double Draw Poker

When you represent a made hand by betting or raising while on a draw, it is known as semi-bluffing. One of the reasons that good poker players win is not because they have the best hand at showdown more than everyone else, but rather how they make opponents fold the best hand. The best hands to “bluff” are ones that are most likely to improve on a later street; namely draws. Therefore, the most effective bluffs are ones that have a lot of equity, such as flush draws or straight draws via semi-bluffs.

Summary