5 CARD DRAW BASIC STRATEGY

If you play 5 Card Draw strategy for real money, then you should follow at least the basic poker strategy. As the basic poker strategy has been covered in other sections, we will merely highlight the basic strategy as follows:

• Know your opponents
• Set a limit on your bankroll
• Position of seating can be important
• Know your odds and probabilities
• Decision should be made using POT ODDS when drawing
• Vary your style of play

The correct way of playing is to use pot odds when drawing. For example, if you are dealt K,8,6,5,4 rainbow with no more than 2 of one suit, there are four outs of drawing a 7 if you discard the K. As you don't know any of the other cards, the correct probability calculation is 4/47=0.085 or 8.5%. If the pot is $20 and to call a bet of $5, your pot odds to call is $5/$25=20%. In other words, as the probability required to call is much higher than the odds of drawing a 7, you should FOLD. If the pot is $20 and it costs only $1, the required probability is 4.8% and then it would be correct to draw for a 7.

If there are more than one drawing round, then you have to recalculate the odds. Let's assume that there are only two drawing rounds. If you don't hit the 7 the first time around on the $1 raise and the drawn card doesn't really improve your hand, then your odds of hitting a 7 on the second draw is 4/46=8.7%. Again, use the pot odds to determine whether to call or fold the hand. If it costs $5 to stay in the hand, fold as the required probability to stay in the hand is still way above 10%.

Essentially, pot odds is used to calculate the EXPECTED RETURN. If the expected return is negative, then fold. If it is positive, call. The Expected Return is positive when the required probability to stay in the hand is lower than the probability of drawing the card that you expect will win the hand, and conversely, it the Expected Return is negative when the required probability to stay in the hand is greater than the probability of drawing. The mathematics used to calculate drawing 2 or more cards is only slightly more complicated but a lot more tedious. However, the probabilities are calculated in a similar fashion, but you need to calculate based on two cards and adding up the probabilities.