Exclusive Netbettor Texas Hold'em Article:

Crushing the Microlimits
Playing a Draw

One of the defining characteristics of microlimit Texas hold‘em is the abundance of opportunities for a player to extract maximum value from their drawing hands. This is a function of two dynamics; first, there are often so many players contesting the pot that you’re enjoying a huge overlay when you’re drawing to a winning hand. Secondly, your implied odds are usually tremendous, since if you complete your hand your opponents usually won’t hesitate to pay you off.

How does this impact the play of drawing hands? Simply put, it means you should be playing most of your draws very aggressively on the flop. This would seem self-evident, yet many successful microlimit players are leaving bucketfulls of money on the table after every session because they don’t pump up their big draws. For most players, ratcheting up the aggression factor with their flush and straight draws is probably the single easiest thing they could do to improve their win rate.

Now, as with everything else in hold ‘em there are exceptions to this. Pumping your big draws on the flop should be seen as a guideline, not a mandate. To help you understand which draws you should be betting and raising with, and which ones you should be playing more passively, let’s look at a few sample hands and work through the analysis.

Example 1
There have been four callers and you’re on the button with Q J. You raise, both blinds call, and all the original callers call your raise. So there are seven players to the flop for fourteen small bets. The flop comes T 9 6. The small blind bets, the big blind raises, and two players call. The action is on you. What’s your move?

Answer: Three-bet, and don’t give it a second’s thought. In fact, I wanted to use this hand as an example because it’s one of the clearest examples of a draw which should be played to the hilt. You have eight outs to the nuts, a back door heart draw and two decent overcards, which means you should win this pot on average about 40% of the time. Since you’re getting 4:1 on a three-bet here, you’re getting a monstrous overlay. Also, by re-raising you have a chance of getting a free card on the turn if you miss (as all may check to you), and you may get almost unlimited action if you hit the turn from two pair or a lesser straight, since the way you’ve played the hand just screams ‘big pocket pair’. If an eight drops on the turn, for instance, someone with a seven may hit the gong and cap it with you.

Remember: your decision on whether to bet or raise should never be based on ‘whether you think you currently have the best hand’. Instead, it should be based on what your chances are of arriving at the showdown with the best hand. In a case like this, you’d much rather the Q J than a hand like J T, even though the second hand has more current value, since your chances of dragging the pot are better in this case with the big draw than with the made hand. Players who don’t understand this aren’t making as much money as they should; and in microlimit, where big draws comprise such a large part of your expectation, that can add up to a lot of money at the end of the year.

Example 2
You have the Q T in the big blind. An early position player raises, and three players cold call. The small blind calls, and you call. The flop comes 9 8 4. You check (though you could make a case for betting out here), and all check to a late position player who bets. What’s your play?

Check-raise. When the pot gets big—and this one’s getting that way—your concern should be to improve your chances of winning the hand, not trying to make the pot bigger. True, by just calling you stand a better chance of keeping the field involved in the hand, which is what traditional thinking tells you to do with a draw. But you do have two overcards, and if your raise can get hands like KT, KQ, AQ, T8, Q8, etc. to fold you have gained tremendously if a ten or a queen falls on a later street.

This is another play that many experienced players miss. For some reason, many decent but not great players have an irrational aversion to dumping money in the pot when they don’t yet have a pair or better. Suffice to say, there is no excuse for this kind of thinking. By raising here you may improve your chances of winning the pot by as much as 10%. That’s reason enough to check raise.

Example 3
You have the 4 5 on the button, and call after five callers. The small blind folds, and the big blind knuckes. The flop comes K K J. An early position player bets out, the next player raises, and the next player cold calls. All fold to you. What should you do?

Just call here. With the paired board, and two face cards, you will have a greater than usual chance of running to a full house. Your draw is small, which means there’s some chance that you could be up against a bigger flush draw, or that your flush will be counterfeited by running spades. Also note that raising to protect your pair outs (a four or a five, in this case) doesn’t make sense, since it doesn’t look likely that a small pair is going to be good here on the showdown.

When deciding whether to pump a draw or not, you should consider these factors:

1) How big is the pot currently?

2) How important is it that I try and protect my outs to a one-pair hand?

3) How likely is it that someone is drawing to a bigger draw (a bigger flush draw, if you’re drawing to a flush, or a flush draw if you’re drawing to a straight on a two-suited board)?

4) What are my chances of getting a free card on the turn if I miss?

5) Will playing my hand aggressively deceive my opponents into thinking I have a different hand?

6) What are my chances showing down the best hand on the river (as opposed to your chances of having the best hand now)?

By weighing these factors, you’ll find yourself making the right decision with your big draws a majority of the time.

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Other Poker Strategy Articles:
The Value Bet
The Dark Art of the Suckout I
The Dark Art of the Suckout II