May '07 Best of "Coach's" Poker Columns

WHEN ON A draw, let's first look at the conventional "pot-odds" method of evaluating whether to call. Suppose that you have the A

and face a bet of $20 when you and your opponent have $500 each at that point. The flop is K

, giving you the nut-flush draw and an ace overcard. There is $30 in the pot. Should you call? The pot-odds method would have you evaluate the hand as follows:

"I have 12 outs - nine hearts and three aces. There are five known cards - my two and the board's three. Since there are 52 cards in the deck, that leaves 47 unknown cards. Since 12 of these 47 cards help me, 35 do not. That leaves me a 35-to-12 dog, which is nearly 3-to-1. I am getting $50 to $20 on my money, which is 2.5-to-1. The pot odds do not quite justify a call. I fold."

The truth is that hardly anyone would fold here except a person who did this calculation and then erred by looking no further. Good no-limit hold'em players look at a lot of other factors besides pot odds in making a decision. The reason is that pot odds do not tell the full story - or anything close to it. A fair amount of the time, you may earn more money after making your hand. In fact, if you hit the flush and your opponent has something like the 9

, he makes a lower flush than yours and figures to lose a bunch. The money you stand to make in the future if you help is the "implied odds," and it makes a draw more attractive than the pot odds would indicate. Both pot odds and implied odds are in the toolbox of most experienced poker players, but they by no means tell the full story about how to evaluate a drawing hand.

Let us revisit this hand. We said that you have 12 outs. That means that you have 12 cards that figure to make your hand a winner. However, pairing the ace improves it to only top pair, which may or may not be good. There is also the problem of the "intersect" card, the 8

, which gives you the nut flush but also pairs the board. If the 8

comes, your hand is still a favorite to be good (it would help to know the prior betting), but it will cost you a bundle if your opponent makes a full house with it. So, you have four non-nut draws. When some of your outs are not "nut outs" (cards that give you a lock), your draw loses some of its value. Always determine how many of your outs are sure winners before settling on the worth of your draw.

There is yet another problem with the hand we hold. We can make the nuts and still lose the pot. The nut flush on an unpaired board can still lose if, after hitting, there is still another card to come. Your opponent may have a redraw; on this hand, it will almost surely be a redraw to make a full house, but once in a blue moon, another card of the flush suit comes to give your opponent a straight flush. Ouch! Redraws are a big factor in my favorite game of pot-limit Omaha, because a set is quite often the hand you are drawing against.

When you are considering whether to call a flop bet, and there is money left to be wagered, you generally assume that you need to hit on the turn or you will have to face another bet, perhaps a much larger one. However, sometimes you miss your hand but your opponent fails to fire again, and gives you a free card. This "free-card equity" can seldom be assumed, but it still tends to increase the value of a drawing hand.

There is another large factor that exists when deciding whether to play a draw that I have not yet discussed: the possibility of winning the pot without helping. This of course can happen when you think you are drawing, but your opponent is also on a draw and your high card beats his. More often than not, you will have to launch a bluff to take down the pot when missing your draw. Strong no-limit hold'em players often call a flop bet when neither the pot odds nor the implied odds are anything close to what a mathematician would tell them is needed. Here is an example taken from a hand that I held in the 2005 World Series of Poker championship event.

I was on the button with the 6

. We were playing with $1,000-$2,000 blinds and a $300 ante. An early-position player open-raised to $6,000 and someone in middle position called. Since I had fine position and more than a hundred grand in front of me, I called. Both blinds played, and the flop came J

, giving me an open-end straight draw. The blinds checked, the preflop raiser bet $16,000, and the middle-position player folded. What should I do? Just looking at the odds and analyzing the strength of my hand, it looks like a fold is in order. I am getting about 49-to-16 odds on a hand that has eight cards that make my straight and 39 that don't. In other words, I am getting less than 4-to-1 odds on a hand that is more than a 4-to-1 underdog. Also, two of my straight cards put a possible flush on the board. Yet, I called (and the blinds folded), and believe this hand to be a clear call. Here is my reasoning:

To fire into four opponents, my adversary probably has an overpair. The chance of him having a heart draw is slim. Aside from everything else, if he had hearts, he probably would have two overcards (he raised preflop from early position), and likely would have bet closer to the size of the pot in an effort to win it immediately. The implied odds are good, because making the straight without creating a three-flush on the board may well get a big bet out of him. But the real reason I thought this to be an easy call is the possibility of a hijacking if a heart comes on the turn. In fact, that is exactly what happened. The 2

came, making a three-flush. He checked, I bet $25,000, and he disgustedly folded.

As you can see, deciding whether to play a draw involves a lot more than simply figuring the odds. In fact, I hardly ever do any math during the hand; I play on feel and experience. My decisions require running a lot of factors through my "computer."