Many players have trouble playing straight and flush draws. This is especially true for those new to the game and hardly a surprise, as these hands can be tricky.
When you know the correct strategy, though, your straight and flush draws can be very profitable, despite the fact you’ll end up missing a fair percentage of the time.
Before we dive into specific tips for these hands, it’s important to point out an obvious yet often neglected fact. Not all draws are created equal.
For example, a gutshot to the nut straight is a hand with a fair amount of equity; a gutshot to the bottom end of the straight is, by comparison, a pretty bad hand.
So, how should you approach your draws in some common spots, and what adjustments should you make to increase your profitability with these types of holdings? Let’s get into it!
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Tip #1: Raise Your Draws Against Small Bets
Small bets usually indicate high frequency, i.e., your opponents will mostly be doing this with medium-strength hands, such as weak top pairs. With this knowledge, you can raise more frequently with your draws when facing a small flop bet.
For example, you call an LJ raise in the big blind playing 40 blinds deep, and the flop comes 8♠4♥2♠. After you check, they continuation bet for just 1.5 blinds.
This is the scenario where the solver suggests raising 22% of your range. A decent chunk of that range consists of solid top pairs and better, which are hands that we are happy to get the money in the middle with given effective stacks.
However, a sizeable portion of our raising range also consists of gutshots and flush draws, as well as some junk hands.
When it comes to the draws, we are using a mixed strategy, where we are raising with a hand like 76o 25% to 30% of the time. You can simplify this a bit by selecting some hands that you always raise with and then picking some that you always call with.
While this isn’t really GTO, it is much simpler to do in practice, and the effectiveness of this strategy will depend largely on how observant your opponents are.
If we take the same situation but the opponent now uses a big, pot-size bet on the flop, our raising range decreases drastically to just 6%. Against a bigger size, we are pretty much raising only our value hands, and many weak draws that we are raising against small bets become pure folds.
Tip #2: Raise More Often From Out of Position
Realizing your equity becomes much harder when you are playing out of position. When you are in position, you have much more control over what happens.
Out of position, your opponents have control as they are the ones closing the action on all streets. So, to get the best results, we have to rely much more on fold equity.
Let’s look at an example of a A♠7♥6♦ flop. We have the same scenario, playing against the lojack at 40 big blinds, and we face a 1.5 BB c-bet.
We should be raising about 18% of the time here, and, as you can see, our range contains a lot of draws like 85, 95, 84, and even a hand like 94 with backdoor flush possibilities.
In the same exact situation, if we had the position, we’d only be raising about 8%, as we know the LJ’s range is inherently stronger when they c-bet out of position, plus, we don’t want to reopen the action, and give the opponent a chance to jam over our raise and deny us our equity.
Which brings us to the final tip.
Tip #3: Do Not Raise High Equity Draws
Unlike your weak and medium-strength draws, your high-equity draws don’t benefit from raising. When you have a hand with a lot of equity, you are usually better off calling and trying to realize that equity instead of giving your opponent a chance to shut you down or get you in a break-even spot.
For example, if we look at the 6♠3♠2♥ flop, facing a 3.5 big blinds continuation bet from an in-position opponent, we are only raising our very strong made hands and super strong draws, i.e., straight and flush combos.
However, we don’t want to be raising with hands containing a four or a five, especially if it is A4 and A5. These hands can easily improve, our ace-high could be good, and we can’t call off with them if the opponent shoves over our raise.
Even in the best scenario, you’ll be calling off to put yourself in a spot that’s close to breaking even, which is not something we’re looking to accomplish.
Implementing these three tips into your game will help significantly increase your profitability with drawing hands across the board, both in tournaments and in cash games, especially in 3-bet pots with lower stack-to-pot ratios!
