Universal Truths of Poker 4

BY: Ashley Adams
Contact at: (Asha34@aol.com)
Author of Winning 7-Card Stud

In my prior columns I covered five of the six Universal Truths of Poker (UTP). Here's a quick review for those of you who haven't been keeping track.

UTP #1 Don't Play When Tired
UTP #2 Don't ever drink when playing poker
UTP #3 Don't play beyond your bankroll
UTP #4 Bluff More in Short-handed Games
UTP #5 Play tight in a loose game and loose in a tight game

UTP #6 Never Draw to an Inside Straight.

This is largely a holdover from the days when Draw Poker was king. It's immortalized in movies and books, especially well-remembered as an utterance from that fictitious poker playing cowboy Brett Maverick. But is it always sound advice?

Usually it is. Usually it doesn't make sense to go for that one single rank of cards needed to fill an inside straight. For example, if you hold 4-5-6-8-K in 5-Card Draw you should generally not call a bet, discard the King, and then draw on card hoping to get a 7. You're unlikely to be winning enough if you win to warrant the cost of drawing one of only four cards that will give you a Straight. And even if you do get your Straight you may still lose. So, for 5-card Draw at least it isn't a bad rule of thumb.

That being said, it's important that you understand why it does or doesn't make sense to draw to an inside straight.

First, let me explain the simple math. In a game of 5-Card Draw, when the only cards you see are your own, if you draw to an inside straight, 4 out of the 47 unseen cards will make your Straight. Four times you will make your Straight; 43 times you won't. That's roughly 1:11 odds. So for the bet to make sense you'll need to get at least 11 times the money it costs to call for the call to make sense.

In a limit 5-Card Draw game that's rarely the case. If the game's the standard casino $10/20 game, with two blinds, that means that there will be $15 in the pot initially. If someone raises to $20, if two players call the pot before you, you're getting $75 for your $20 call. That's 3.75:1 - hardly the 11:1 you're looking for.

But now imagine that you're in a very loose game. Imagine that you have the same structure as above but instead of two callers you have 4 callers. Instead of a $75 pot you have $115. If the blinds call as well you have $130. You're getting $130 for your $20 call. That's better than the last example but still well short of the 11:1 odds you want to call.

But here's another scenario for you to consider. Imagine you aren't playing 5-Draw but 7-Card Stud. It's Sixth Street, the next to last betting round when you have six cards.

It has been one of those typical low or mid limit games with a lot of loose players staying in the game. On Fifth Street five of you called the bet from the guy with the Ace showing who had been betting the whole way. In this $5/10 game, there's $130 in the pot as you receive your sixth card. You have 4-5-6-8-K and receive a 10. It doesn't help you at all.

The guy with the Ace up still doesn't show a pair. Even so, he bets $10. The other players fold to you. You have an inside straight draw.

If you don't hit your 7 you are sure to lose. You haven't seen any 7s among the 28 cards that you've seen. Even so, one of the UTP that you've known all your life is that you don't draw to an inside straight. So what should you do?

There's no question about it. You should draw to the inside straight. Some simple arithmetic shows you why.

With 28 cards seen (22 in front of other players plus 6 of your own) that leaves 24 unseen cards. Of those are four 7s. Four cards make your Straight and 20 cards don't, or simplified 5:1 against you drawing the 7. That's a lot better than your 11:1 odds of drawing one in a 5-Draw game.

So if it's 5:1 against you then the pot needs to be offering you at least that much to make it proper to call. Well, the pot is now $140 ($130 on Fifth Street plus your lone opponent's $10 bet). That's 14:1, a huge overlay, certainly worth a call. In fact, it's even a better bet than that because you'll almost certainly get another $10 if you make your hand, but will fold to a bet if you misss So go ahead and call.

Lest you think that the only exception to the UTP come with Stud poker, just think about Pot Limit and No Limit games for a minute. You can surely imagine situations where the possibility of making relatively large bets on the end can make calling relatively small bets early correct when you're drawing to an inside straight. For example, if you're playing 5-Draw and 5 players call the $10 blind, your $10 call can make sense even though the pot is only $65.00. That's because if you hit your hand after the draw, something that we've seen only happens about 1 out of 12 times, you can expect to win at least $130. If the pot is checked to you and you bet the Pot of $65 there is a strong chance that at least one and maybe two players will call your bet - if only because they suspect you're bluffing with a hand they can beat.

Poker, when it is played correctly, is not a simple or mechanical game. As we've seen with other UTG, if you want to improve your play you need to think more deeply about the reasons behind these generalizations and be willing to find the exceptions to these general rules.

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