Five card draw - the importance of showdown value

Poker Variants / Marcus Bateman / 27 January 2011 / Leave a Comment

Five card draw is relatively unique amongst poker games, in that it only has two streets of betting. You have a betting interval once you are dealt your cards, a discard phase where you can attempt to improve your hand, and then one final betting round before the cards are turned up. This makes the game very simple to learn - hence it's place as one of the core games that beginners nearly always start off on - but also changes the strategy considerably compared to other games, particularly in terms of showdown value.

The core rule with all forms of poker is that the more decisions you have to make, the more skill comes through. The more skill that comes through, the harder it is to get to showdown regularly, and the less the specific cards you hold actually matter. In a game like deep stacked No Limit Hold'em for example, most hands never reach showdown, simply because there are so many betting streets and options that it is much rarer that two players ever have equal enough hands to actually get to the river and see who has the goods.

In five card draw, the opposite of this effect is true. Most hands that start good enough to get to the discard phase will stick around to showdown even in the face of quite severe action from all but the very tightest players. This is simply because there are not enough streets to really set up complex bluffs - folding with any kind of strong hand is a pretty large mistake when you have to call just a single bet after one draw in a game where players so often miss, and with the pot limit nature of the game, you are always getting at least 2 to 1 on your money - more than enough to keep you in hands against any bluff happy player.

Because of this, it is crucial that you stick to relatively strict starting hand requirements in Five Card Draw against all but the tightest opponents. It is rare that you can just run over the table at such a game, and just like in limit games, you simply have to hold the goods often to succeed. In any game where you regularly go to showdown, the players who win will be the ones who generally have the hands at showdown, and despite it's pot limit structure, it is a game where it is hard to move weak players off of hands, and requires the astute player to use differing tools to those of the other big bet games to win the money.

Show me more Poker Variants Articles

Join Betfair today and we'll let you choose your own bonus sign-up here and your account will be active within a couple of minutes.