Deuce to Seven - The Money Street

Poker Variants / Marcus Bateman / 08 March 2011 / Leave a Comment

By far and away the most important street in all of Deuce to Seven Triple Draw Poker is the river - after the third draw has been done and the final bets go in. This is not only because it is one of the two streets where the betting doubles, but also because it is the most complex street to analyse, and where mistakes can add up to huge sums when made habitually. If you are starting to pick up this game in your local live mixed game or elsewhere, it is crucial you get a solid grasp of river play as fast as possible.

Most of the time the river in 2-7 will still have a player(s) drawing. This means you have a great deal of scope for both making good bluffs, making nice calls, and value betting very thinly. However, you also have the option of making horrid mistakes in all these areas as well, and making sure you have a firm grasp of the players around you is crucial to getting on the right side of all of these choices.

Some players in 2-7 never bluff rivers if they miss. They simply fold to any bet from a pat hand (and even some one card draws), reason that they made a good play at the right price, and then wonder why their value bets never get paid off. These are players it is essential to identify quickly and attack pretty much every river you can - even patting early with junk at points to set up nice river spots.

Conversely, some 2-7 players basically fire every river they see no matter what they hit - they see a few folds from the tight players and just reason that there is so much in the pot that they should bet with everything. Again, it is crucial that you identify these players quickly, as your plan of attack against them is a near polar opposite to that of the tight players - you simply want to call down with most hands with showdown value and try and trap their endless bluffs.

Finally, you have good players, who will be mixing in frequent bluffs on drawn rivers (particularly with their hands that have zero showdown value - such as when they pair a seven or eight), but also checking and calling hands with showdown value, such as Broadway cards and the odd low pair, and value betting anything good in most passive looking spots.

If you can get a good handle on exactly what people will (or won't) do on the river in 2-7 you already have a pretty big edge against most weak players. Most people really struggle to understand exactly how to behave on the final street in this relatively new game, and huge rewards await you with a bit of close player observation and some nerve.

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