Bloggers / Matthew Pitt / 09 February 2009 / Leave a comment

In Texas Hold'em, being dealt a premium hand preflop or hitting the flop hard is a rarity. A large proportion of your time will be spent needing to draw to extra cards in order to improve your holding and to win the hand.

"Many amateur players see they have a 12-15 outs and opt to slow play their hands, hoping to trap their opponent with tricky play."

Whilst a lot of professionals will agree that a player should not lose all their chips and go broke on a draw, some draws are so powerful that you should be prepared to go all the way with them. These draws are often referred to as combo-draws.

If a draw has twelve or more outs then it can be described as a combo-draw. Three examples of these types of draw are when you hold a a gut-shot straight flush draw, which has 12 outs, a pair and a flush draw, which has 14 outs and the very rare open-ended straight flush draw, which has a mammoth 15 outs.

Having twelve outs mean you will be approximately even money against an over pair, so with a combo-draw you are either going to be a small underdog or even a small favourite! Combo-draws are rare so you need to make the most of them and maximise your profits with them. For that to happen you should really play them fast.

If you are approximately even money in the hand, you only need pot odds of 1-1 in order to push or make the call of a push. After a preflop raise, a bet on the flop and a raise from your opponent, you will often have far superior pot odds for you to put the rest of your stack into the middle of the table.

One advantage of playing combo-draws fast is you gain fold equity. Many amateur players see they have a 12-15 outs and opt to slow play their hands, hoping to trap their opponent with tricky play.

However, flat calling has zero fold equity but by playing aggressively you can either win when called by hitting one of your many outs, or even get you opponent to make a tough fold and take the pot uncontested.

Imagine you are in a tournament,with 30k effective stacks and have been dealt suited connectors in the form of nine-eight of clubs and raise first to act on the button to 600 with blinds at 100/200. The small blind then makes it 1,800 to go, forcing the big blind to fold and you make the call.

The flop comes down 7c 3d 6c and the small blind bets 3,000 into the 3,800 pot, you then raise the action to 12,000, now your opponent is in a tricky spot. If he calls here he knows he has to avoid a large percentage of the deck, if he folds he gives up all his equity in his hand and if he shoves here holding Queens or better, he is actually a 55-45 underdog! Not a good spot to be in at all!

Whilst the pro's advice of not going broke on a draw does ring true the majority of the time, being prepared to do so with combo-draws will yield better results in the longer term.

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