Flush Draw When a player has four cards in his hand of the same suit and is hoping to draw a fifth to make a flush. A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z. A Royal Flush is the highest hand in poker. Between two Royal flushes, there can be no tie breaker. If two players have Royal Flushes, they split the pot. The odds of this happening though are very rare and almost impossible in texas holdem because the board requires three cards of one suit for anyone to have a flush in that suit. You are on the flop with a pretty decent flush draw. In Texas Hold’Em there are five community cards dealt that you can build your hand off of with the two cards that are in your hand. Sometimes, the five community cards are all of hte same suit and they make a flush. 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. How to win more money at poker Examples Two Card Flush Draws.

1. How To Win At Ultimate Texas Holdem
2. Texas Holdem Terms
3. Flush Rules Texas Holdem
4. What Is A Flush Draw In Texas Holdem Games

Mathematics: Flushes & Straights : Simple Pot Odds : Implied Odds : Reverse Implied Odds

Watch SplitSuit's video on Flushes and Flush Draws for 8 hand histories involving strategy on playing flushes in Texas Hold'em.

You are on the flop with a pretty decent flush draw. You have two hearts in your hand and there are another two on the flop.

Unfortunately, some cool cat has made a bet, putting you in a tricky situation where you have to decide whether or not it is in your best interest to call to try and make the flush, or fold and save your money.

This is a prime example of where you are going to take advantage of 'pot odds' to work out whether or not it is worth making the call.

What are pot odds? What about flushes and straights?

Basically, just forget about the name if you haven't heard about it before, there's no need to let it throw you off. Just think of 'pot odds' as the method for finding out whether chasing after a draw (like a flush or straight) is going to be profitable. If you're on your toes, you might have already been able to guess that it is generally better to chase after a draw when the bet is small rather than large, but we'll get to that in a minute...

Pot odds will tell you whether or not to call certain sized bets to try and complete your flush or straight draw.

Why use pot odds?

Because it makes you money, of course.

If you always know whether the best option is to fold or call when you're stuck with a hand like a flush draw, you are going to be saving (and winning) yourself money in the long run. On top of that, pot odds are pretty simple to work out when you get the hang of it, so it will only take a split second to work out if you should call or fold the next time you're in a sticky drawing situation. How nice is that?

How to work out whether or not to call with a flush or straight draw.

Now, this is the meat of the article. But trust me on this one, the 'working-out' part is not as difficult as you might think, so give me a chance to explain it to you before you decide to knock it on the head. So here we go...

Essentially, there are two quick and easy parts to working out pot odds. The first is to work out how likely it is that you will make your flush or straight (or whatever the hell you are chasing after), and the second is to compare the size of the bet that you are facing with the size of the pot. Then we use a little bit of mathematical magic to figure out if we should make the call.

1] Find out how likely it is to complete your draw (e.g. completing a flush draw).

All we have to do for this part is work out how many cards we have not seen, and then figure out how many of these unknown cards could make our draw and how many could not.

We can then put these numbers together to get a pretty useful ratio. So, for example, if we have a diamond flush draw on the flop we can work out...

The maths.

There are 47 cards that we do not know about (52 minus the 2 cards we have and minus the 3 cards on the flop).

• 9 of these unknown cards could complete our flush (13 diamonds in total minus 2 diamonds in our hand and the 2 diamonds on the flop).
• The other 38 cards will not complete our flush (47 unknown cards, minus the helpful 9 cards results in 38 useless ones).
• This gives us a ratio of 38:9, or scaled down... roughly 4:1.

So, at the end of all that nonsense we came out with a ratio of 4:1. This result is a pretty cool ratio, as it tells us that for every 4 times we get a useless card and miss our draw, 1 time will we get a useful card (a diamond) and complete our flush. Now all we need to do is put this figure to good use by comparing it to a similar ratio regarding the size of the bet that we are facing.

After you get your head around working out how many cards will help you and how many won't, the only tricky part is shortening a ratio like 38:9 down to something more manageable like 4:1. However, after you get used to pot odds you will just remember that things like flush draws are around 4:1 odds. To be honest, you won't even need to do this step the majority of the time, because there are very few ratios that you need to remember, so you can pick them off the top of your head and move on to step 2.

2] Compare the size of the bet to the size of the pot.

The title pretty much says it all here. Use your skills from the last step to work out a ratio for the size of the bet in comparison to the size of the pot. Just put the total pot size (our opponent's bet + the original pot) first in the ratio, and the bet size second. Here are a few quick examples for you...

• $20 bet into a $100 pot = 120:20 = 6:1
• $0.25 bet creating a total pot size of $1 = 1:0.25 = 4:1
• $40 bet creating a total pot size of $100 = 100:40 = 2.5:1

That should be enough to give you an idea of how to do the second step. In the interest of this example, I am going to say that our opponent (with a $200 stack) has bet $20 in to a $80 pot, giving us odds of 5:1 ($100:$20). This is going to come in very handy in the next step.

This odds calculation step is very simple, and the only tricky part is getting the big ratios down into more manageable ones. However, this gets a lot easier after a bit of practice, so there's no need to give up just yet if you're not fluent when it comes to working with ratios after the first 5 seconds. Give yourself a chance!

To speed up your pot odds calculations during play, try using the handy (and free) SPOC program.

3] Compare these two ratios.

Now then, we know how likely it is that we are going to complete our draw, and we have worked out our odds from the pot (pot odds, get it? It's just like magic I know.). All we have to do now is put these two ratios side to side and compare them...

• 5:1 pot odds
• 4:1 odds of completing our draw on the next card

The pot odds in this case are bigger than the odds of completing our draw, which means that we will be making more money in the long run for every time we hit according to these odds. Therefore we should CALL because we will win enough to make up for the times that we miss and lose our money.

If that doesn't make total sense, then just stick to these hard and fast rules if it makes things easier:

If your pot odds are bigger than your chances of hitting - CALL
If your pot odds are smaller than your chances of hitting - FOLD

So just think of bigger being better when it comes to pot odds. Furthermore, if you can remember back to the start of the article when we had the idea that calling smaller bets is better, you will be able to work out that small bets give you bigger pot odds - makes sense right? It really comes together quite beautifully after you get your head around it.

What if there are two cards to come?

In this article I have shown you how to work out pot odds for the next card only. However, when you are on the flop there are actually 2 cards to come, so shouldn't you work out the odds for improving to make the best hand over the next 2 cards instead of 1?

No, actually.

Even if there are 2 cards to come (i.e. you're on the flop), you should still only work out the odds of improving your hand for the next card only.

The reason for this is that if you work using odds for improving over two cards, you need to assume that you won't be paying any more money on the turn to see the river. Seeing as you cannot be sure of this (it's quite unlikely in most cases), you should work out your pot odds for the turn and river individually. This will save you from paying more money than you should to complete your draw.

I discuss this important principle in a little more detail on my page about the rule of 2 and 4 for pot odds. It's also one of the mistakes poker players make when using odds.

Note: The only time you use odds for 2 cards to come combined is when your opponent in all-in on the flop. In almost every other case, you take it one card at a time.

Playing flush and straight draws overview.

I really tried hard to keep this article as short as possible, but then again I didn't want to make it vague and hazy so that you had no idea about what was going on. I'm hoping that after your first read-through that you will have a rough idea about how to work out when you should call or fold when on a flush or straight draw, but I am sure that it will take you another look over or two before it really starts to sink in. So I advise that you read over it again at least once.

The best way to get to grips with pot odds is to actually start working them out for yourself and trying them out in an actual game. It is all well and good reading about it and thinking that you know how to use them, but the true knowledge of pot odds comes from getting your hands dirty and putting your mind to work at the poker tables.

It honestly isn't that tough to use pot odds in your game, as it will take less than a session or two before you can use them comfortably during play. So trust me on this one, it is going to be well worth your while to spend a little time learning how to use pot odds, in return for always knowing whether to call or fold when you are on a draw. It will take a load off your mind and put more money in your pocket.

To help you out when it comes to your calculations, take a look at the article on simple pot odds. It should make it all a lot less daunting.

Go back to the sublime Texas Hold'em guide.

Can You Afford Not To Use
Poker Tracker 4?

“I wouldn’t play another session of online poker without it”

“I play $25NL, and in under 1 week PT4 had paid for itself”

Comments

It is a very common situation to be in when playing in the game of Texas Holdem... having a potentially strong hand that needs another certain card to complete it. This is known as a ‘drawing’ hand, as you are drawing to a specific card or a specific type of card.

These types of hands can be very difficult to play, especially if you are facing bets and raises and need to decide whether or not to call. However, by the end of this article you should be fully aware of how to play drawing hands, and know when to fold and when to call when facing a bet.

Flush draws and straight draws.

The most common drawing hands are flush draws and straight draws. When playing a drawing hand we have to evaluate how likely it is that we will complete our hand by the next card. We can do this by looking at the number of ‘outs’ that we have.

What are outs?

An ‘out’ is a card that will complete our hand. For example we have a diamond flush draw, an ‘out’ would be any diamond card. The more outs that we have, the better the chances are that we will complete our hand on the turn of the next card.

An out is simply a card left in the deck that will complete the hand that you are drawing to.

With a typical diamond flush draw (or any flush draw) we will have a total of 9 outs, as there will be 2 diamonds in our hand along with another 2 diamonds on the flop. There are a total of 13 diamonds in the deck, which means that 9 will be left in the deck that we will be trying to hit.

Similarly, we can work out the number of outs and likelihood of completing our hand for straight draws. There are however two different degrees of straight draw, the inside straight draw and the open-ended straight draw. An open ended straight draw is when we can hit either card on the ends of the straight to complete our hand.

Example of different straight draws.

If we are holding 7 8 on a board of As 5 6, we can either hit a 4 or a 9 to make our draw. Similarly, in an inside straight draw we are looking to hit one card in the middle of the straight to complete our hand. For example, if we again hold 7 8c but with a board of A 5 4, we have to catch a 6 to complete our straight.

An open-ended straight draw has 2 outs, whereas an inside straight draw has 1 out. This makes inside straight draws harder to complete.

Therefore, with an open ended straight draw we have 8 outs (fours 4s and four 9s), and with an inside straight draw we have 4 outs (four 6s), meaning that we are more likely to complete an open-ended straight draw on the turn of the next card rather than an inside straight draw.

How to work with the number of 'outs'.

As we already know, the more outs we have the better, because it improves our chances of making our hand with the more outs we have. The real value of these figures lies in when working out the specific odds of winning the hand. We can then use these odds to determine whether or not it is worth calling a certain size bet to try and complete our hand.

How To Win At Ultimate Texas Holdem

There will be a few numbers involved in the next part of this article, but bear with me, its not as difficult as it might appear on first impression!

Working out whether to call or fold.

We can use the number of outs to work out the odds of winning the hand by comparing it to the number of cards we don’t want that are left in the deck. If we have a flush draw on the flop, we have 9 outs to try and make our flush by the turn. There will be 47 cards left in the deck in total, of which 9 of these will make our hand, whilst the other 38 will not.

• 52 minus our holecards and the flop cards (5 in total) = 47.
• 9 cards of the same suit that we are chasing after.
• 38 are of a suit that will not complete our flush.

Now if we put these figures into a ratio of cards we want against cards we do, we get 38:9. If we simplify this ratio using basic mathematics, we get a new easier to use ratio of roughly 4:1. Now this figure means that for every 4 times we do not make our hand on the turn, 1 time we will, and that is all that we need to know for the time being.

Now we know that we know that the odds of making our hand (and thus winning the pot) are 4:1, we can use these odds to determine whether or not to call a bet or raise. When facing a bet, we have to compare the size of the bet to the size of the pot; this will give us our pot odds.

Using the odds when facing a bet.

Lets say for example our opponent bets $20 making the pot $100. We now must call $20 to try and win $100, but should we?

If we look at the ratio between the bet and the pot, we get 100:20, or put more simply 5:1. We are getting better odds from the pot (4:1) than we are from the cards, as we will be winning more for the number of times we make our hand. Therefore we should make the call. So as a general rule, if the pot odds are better (or bigger) than the odds we are getting to make our hand, we should call, as this will be the profitable play in the long run.

If the pot odds are bigger than the odds of completing your hand (based on the outs), you should call.

These odds and probabilities are constantly changing depending on the type of draw we have and the amount our opponent bets into the pot. Although it may look a little tedious and difficult at first, it is not too hard to grasp, especially if you use the system frequently. It may seem like more effort than it is worth to learn about the odds, but it is a great feeling when you always know whether or not to call or fold for draws, as you will never be unsure of what to do.

Texas Holdem Terms

This article discussed the methods of playing draws passively, to try and see the next card as cheaply as possible. Read my article on playing drawing hands aggressively for alternative profitable methods of playing drawing hands.

Flush Rules Texas Holdem

Go back to the awesome Texas Hold'em Strategy.

What Is A Flush Draw In Texas Holdem Games

Comments