DRAWING HANDS, YOURS AND THEIRS.

The objective here can be summed up quite simply. Make players with drawing hands pay to see every card and when you have the drawing hand you want to see additional cards at as low a price as possible.

A made hand on the flop with possible draws.

Suppose the flop comes with two connected or two suited cards:

Connected: Kd 6h 7c

Suited: Kd 3d 9s

You are on Big Slick so you definetly don’t want to slow play your pair of Kings with top kicker in either of these situations. Allowing a player on an open-ended straight draw or a flush draw to see cards for free is bad strategy, the preferred play is to win the pot right now, so you bet out to make drawing to the hand too expensive and they fold. If you check your top pair to the river and the drawing hands miss you also may have to deal with a bluff. The odds for completing a flush is about 3-1 and the inside straight draw about 5-1 so structure your bets so that your opponent is getting negative pot-odds if they call. A pot sized bet is always a good choice because no drawing hand will have 2-1 odds of completing (In a rare scenario, two connected over-cards with a straight and flush draw will have pots odds to call a pot sized bet). If your opponent calls the pot size bet and then misses on the turn they have only one card to come so an increased bet size will make it extremely expensive to keep drawing for that straight or flush. This strategy works to your advantage if they fold, you win the pot, and if they call and miss you will take down a much larger pot. If the drawing hand calls and hits you can quickly fold. Using this betting tactic you’ll win more often than the drawing hands. If you are raised you have to know the opponent well enough to put them on a hand. Is this a draw trying to scare you or two pair? Maybe even a set or just a total bluff trying to raise you into the muck?

If you’re on the drawing hand you want to see 4th street for free. One tactic I’ve been fairly successful with is to re-raise a minimal pre-flop raise. I am, as often as not, flat called and then checked on the flop giving me the turn for this early minimal investment (often the river as well). A lot of players make small raises on the flop, so if it’s relatively inexpensive to re-raise I consider it worth the risk. The benefit is to slow down my opponent’s betting when they flop top/second pair so my drawing hand can be completed at minimal expense.

This is a bit of fancy play and can back-fire when your opponent comes back with a large raise; but, you can then quickly fold. I’d rather commit a few chips early rather than having to fold my draw to a large bet on 4th street.

Eric Seidel wins Ultimate Poker Challenge at the Plaza!

Eric Seidel, professional poker player from Las Vegas, took his chip lead into the Ultimate Poker Challenge final table on Monday and never looked back. He won the event and picked up the first place prize money from the $35,000 prize pool collected from 35 players that entered this event. Our congratulations to Eric for his win. He is now qualified to play in the semi-final tournament.