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.

1. Texas Holdem Poker Draw Odds
2. Texas Holdem Poker Draw Poker

A poker player is drawing if they have a hand that is incomplete and needs further cards to become valuable. The hand itself is called a draw or drawing hand. For example, in seven-card stud, if four of a player's first five cards are all spades, but the hand is otherwise weak, they are drawing to a flush. Poker Hand Odds for Texas Hold’em. If you’re playing Texas Hold’em, you have 7 cards to chose your hand from. There are 133,784,560 to deal 7 random cards. This changes the odds and probabilities for all poker hands a bit. Those are the probabilities and odds for all Texas Hold’em Poker hands. Hold'em is not unlike other poker games like five-card draw. However, the way players construct their hands in Texas hold'em is a little different than in draw poker. It's always possible a player. The above rules are provided by 'Robert's Rules of Poker' which is authored by Robert Ciaffone, better known in the poker world as Bob Ciaffone, a leading authority on cardroom rules.

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?

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

One of the keys to learning how to play winning poker is to master how to play a variety of hands after the flop. Not only do you have to know how to get value from made hands, you also have to learn how to maximize your drawing hands as well. In fact, learning how the equity of made hands versus draws works can make the difference between being a losing and a winning player. This makes mastering how to play a drawing hand of utmost importance.

A poker player is drawing if they have a hand that is incomplete and needs further cards to become valuable. The hand itself is called a draw or drawing hand. For example, in seven-card stud, if four of a player's first five cards are all spades, but the hand is otherwise weak, they are drawing to a flush. In contrast, a made hand already has value and does not necessarily need to draw to win. A made starting hand with no help can lose to an inferior starting hand with a favorable draw. If an opponent has a made hand that will beat the player's draw, then the player is drawing dead; even if they make their desired hand, they will lose. Not only draws benefit from additional cards; many made hands can be improved by catching an out — and may have to in order to win.

Outs[edit]

An unseen card that would improve a drawing hand to a likely winner is an out. Playing a drawing hand has a positive expectation if the probability of catching an out is greater than the pot odds offered by the pot.

The probability ${\displaystyle P_1}$ of catching an out with one card to come is:

${\displaystyle P_1=\frac{\mathrm{o}\mathrm{u}\mathrm{t}\mathrm{s}}{\mathrm{u}\mathrm{n}\mathrm{s}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{n}\mathrm{c}\mathrm{a}\mathrm{r}\mathrm{d}\mathrm{s}}}$

The probability ${\displaystyle P_2}$ of catching at least one out with two cards to come is:

${\displaystyle P_2=1-\frac{\mathrm{n}\mathrm{o}\mathrm{n}\mathrm{o}\mathrm{u}\mathrm{t}\mathrm{s}}{\mathrm{u}\mathrm{n}\mathrm{s}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{n}\mathrm{c}\mathrm{a}\mathrm{r}\mathrm{d}\mathrm{s}}\times \frac{\mathrm{n}\mathrm{o}\mathrm{n}\mathrm{o}\mathrm{u}\mathrm{t}\mathrm{s}-1}{\mathrm{u}\mathrm{n}\mathrm{s}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{n}\mathrm{c}\mathrm{a}\mathrm{r}\mathrm{d}\mathrm{s}-1}}$

${\displaystyle \mathrm{n}\mathrm{o}\mathrm{n}\mathrm{o}\mathrm{u}\mathrm{t}\mathrm{s}=\mathrm{u}\mathrm{n}\mathrm{s}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{n}\mathrm{c}\mathrm{a}\mathrm{r}\mathrm{d}\mathrm{s}-\mathrm{o}\mathrm{u}\mathrm{t}\mathrm{s}}$

A dead out is a card that would normally be considered an out for a particular drawing hand, but should be excluded when calculating the probability of catching an out. Outs can be dead for two reasons:

• A dead out may work to improve an opponent's hand to a superior hand. For example, if Ted has a spade flush draw and Alice has an outside straight draw, any spades that complete Alice's straight are dead outs because they would also give Ted a flush.
• A dead out may have already been seen. In some game variations such as stud poker, some of the cards held by each player are seen by all players.

Types of draws[edit]

Flush draw[edit]

A flush draw, or four flush, is a hand with four cards of the same suit that may improve to a flush. For example, K♣ 9♣ 8♣ 5♣ x. A flush draw has nine outs (thirteen cards of the suit less the four already in the hand). If a player has a flush draw in Hold'em, the probability to flush the hand in the end is 34.97 percent if there are two more cards to come, and 19.56 percent (9 live cards divided by 46 unseen cards) if there is only one more card to come.

Outside straight draw[edit]

An outside straight draw, also called up and down, double-ended straight draw or open-ended straight draw, is a hand with four of the five needed cards in sequence (and could be completed on either end) that may improve to a straight. For example, x-9-8-7-6-x. An outside straight draw has eight outs (four cards to complete the top of the straight and four cards to complete the bottom of the straight). Straight draws including an ace are not outside straight draws, because the straight can only be completed on one end (has four outs).

Inside straight draw[edit]

An inside straight draw, or gutshot draw or belly buster draw, is a hand with four of the five cards needed for a straight, but missing one in the middle. For example, 9-x-7-6-5. An inside straight draw has four outs (four cards to fill the missing internal rank). Because straight draws including an ace only have four outs, they are also considered inside straight draws. For example, A-K-Q-J-x or A-2-3-4-x. The probability of catching an out for an inside straight draw is half that of catching an out for an outside straight draw.

Double inside straight draw[edit]

Texas Holdem Poker Draw Odds

A double inside straight draw, or double gutshot draw or double belly buster draw can occur when either of two ranks will make a straight, but both are 'inside' draws. For example in 11-card games, 9-x-7-6-5-x-3, or 9-8-x-6-5-x-3-2, or in Texas Hold'em when holding 9-J hole cards on a 7-10-K flop. The probability of catching an out for a double inside straight draw is the same as for an outside straight draw.

Other draws[edit]

Texas Holdem Poker Draw Poker

Sometimes a made hand needs to draw to a better hand. For example, if a player has two pair or three of a kind, but an opponent has a straight or flush, to win the player must draw an out to improve to a full house (or four of a kind). There are a multitude of potential situations where one hand needs to improve to beat another, but the expected value of most drawing plays can be calculated by counting outs, computing the probability of winning, and comparing the probability of winning to the pot odds.

Backdoor draw[edit]

A backdoor draw, or runner-runner draw, is a drawing hand that needs to catch two outs to win. For example, a hand with three cards of the same suit has a backdoor flush draw because it needs two more cards of the suit. The probability ${\displaystyle P_{rr}}$ of catching two outs with two cards to come is:

${\displaystyle P_{rr}=\frac{\mathrm{o}\mathrm{u}\mathrm{t}\mathrm{s}}{\mathrm{u}\mathrm{n}\mathrm{s}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{n}\mathrm{c}\mathrm{a}\mathrm{r}\mathrm{d}\mathrm{s}}\times \frac{\mathrm{o}\mathrm{u}\mathrm{t}\mathrm{s}-1}{\mathrm{u}\mathrm{n}\mathrm{s}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{e}\mathrm{n}\mathrm{c}\mathrm{a}\mathrm{r}\mathrm{d}\mathrm{s}-1}}$

For example, if after the flop in Texas hold 'em, a player has a backdoor flush draw (e.g., three spades), the probability of catching two outs on the turn and river is (10 ÷ 47) × (9 ÷ 46) = 4.16 percent. Backdoor draws are generally unlikely; with 43 unseen cards, it is equally likely to catch two out of seven outs as to catch one out of one. A backdoor outside straight draw (such as J-10-9) is equally likely as a backdoor flush, but any other 3-card straight combination is not worth even one out.

Drawing dead[edit]

A player is said to be drawing dead when the hand he hopes to complete will nonetheless lose to a player who already has a better one. For example, drawing to a straight or flush when the opponent already has a full house. In games with community cards, the term can also refer to a situation where no possible additional community card draws results in a win for a player. (This may be because another player has folded the cards that would complete his hand, his opponent's hand is already stronger than any hand he can possibly draw to or that the card that completes his hand also augments his opponent's.)

See also[edit]

• Poker strategy

References[edit]

1. ^Odds Chart. 'How to play texas holdem poker'. Howtoplaytexasholdempoker.org. Archived from the original on 13 January 2010. Retrieved 22 February 2010.

External links[edit]