The Poker Academy: Expanding Your Draws

Today, I want to talk about a strategy that you can employ from out of position. I like to think of this strategy as “expanding your draws.”

Let’s start by looking at the situation from the point of view of the player with position. You raise preflop and the big blind defends. Some flop like the J-9-4 with two diamonds comes. You make a standard continuation bet. The big blind calls. Now the six of diamonds comes on the turn. Suddenly, the big blind leads into you. How do you feel? It seems like you have been in this situation a zillion times and they show you the flush a huge amount of the time. You also know that sometimes the big blind will have flopped a strong hand and have been passive with it, either to keep the pot small, or slow play. In those spots, they will be leading out in a defensive manner, trying to keep you from having a free look at a fourth diamond. In either of those situations, this is a strong lead from your opponent. So what do you do?

Well, all the hands that you missed with, you have to fold. Your one pair-type holdings are in a tough spot. If you call here, and your opponent has the flush, they are going to bet again. If they had some reasonably strong hand on the flop, you are usually going to be facing a bet on the river as well. It feels like you should fold a lot in that situation. And then sometimes you actually have a strong hand. Sometimes you will have made a flush. Sometimes you will have had a big hand on the flop, like top two or a set.

Sometimes you will have an overpair or top pair and a big diamond to go with it. These are the types of hands that you can continue with comfortably in this position. All said, there are a lot of folds in this spot. It feels like way more than half the hands. This seems like the exact type of situation we are looking for to use our chips as weapons.
So how does this work from the point of view of the big blind? When you naturally get to the turn, there are a variety of hand types you can have. You might naturally make a flush here. You might have a one pair or two pair type hand. These are all hands you should consider betting anyway.

You may also make it to the turn with an open-ended straight draw. A hand like the Q-10 or 10-8 suited. You might also have K-Q for a gut shot and two over cards. All these drawing hands that have yet to make anything are perfect hands for using your chips as weapons.

If you bet an amount that is consistent with your flushes and value hands, you put a lot of pressure on your opponent. It is very important to keep this bet sizing consistent across the whole range of hands you want to bet in this situation. A half-pot sized bet gives you two to one on your money, meaning you only have to win this pot one time in three to break even. When we were looking at the situation from the point of view of the preflop aggressor, we decided that they are probably folding over half the hands. This seems like a great situation. There will be times when your opponent raises you in this situation. This is okay. You know that you are going to lose sometimes. So just fold when this happens. Be comfortable knowing that in the long run, this is a positive expectancy bet and it just didn’t work this time.

So the next question is, are there other ways this situation sets up? Any time there are both flush draws and straight draws on the flop this situation may arise. This play actually works better when you have the straight draw and can bluff the flush. Flushes catch people’s attention. On a 9-8-3 two spade board, if the offsuit queen or jack comes on the turn, people don’t have the same fearful reactions. They often are more concerned with the rank of the card than the open ender that may have arrived. But when the four of spades comes, the flush is in the front of people’s minds when you lead into them.

There are cases where the straight draws can be obvious, but they aren’t as common. You need a high card flop, like J-10-x or 10-9-x. And then you need the lower end of the open ender to arrive, the 9 or 8 on those boards.

Try leading the next time the third card of a suit comes when you have check-called the flop with a open-ender and see what happens. ♠

Rep Porter is a two-time WSOP bracelet winner and is the lead instructor at ThePokerAcademy.com, whose mission is to help poker players achieve better results through better decisions and that is done by teaching poker in a way that makes learning easy and enjoyable with high quality courses taught by professional players.

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