Bridge to Kirk: 'Inside Straight!'

Last issue, I discussed a $2-$4 hold'em session at Commerce Casino in which I was playing with my friend George sitting on my right. A new acquaintance and a relatively new poker player, Kirk Noda, was sitting to my left during that session, and had been an engaging, friendly opponent. At one point after George and I had been rather aggressively debating one of George's plays, Kirk piped in by commenting, "The two of you are certainly one of the more interesting pairs of poker friends I've run into."

That's a nice guy's way of saying, "Man, if this is how you two treat your friends, I wonder how you treat your enemies," so I explained that it was "tough love."

"We wouldn't need it if we could analyze problems calmly like this distinguished young gentleman," George said.

Because our debate had involved a question of pot odds, I had been explaining to Kirk that the old line "never draw to an inside straight" is wrong, because if you're getting the right pot odds and the right implied odds, it can be the right play by a wide margin.

Oddly enough, a hand involving my column's dual-meaning namesake came up shortly thereafter, and proved my point perfectly.

I held the 7 6 on the button in what was a fairly loose-passive game. Four players had already limped in when the action reached me, so I tossed $2 in. The blinds both came along for the ride, and we had seven-way action as the flop came A 8 4.

This wasn't exactly the flop I'd been hoping for, but I did have the proverbial inside-straight draw, as well as a backdoor-flush draw (not worth much in extra equity, but every little bit helps). The big blind bet out, and three people had called by the time it reached me.

Count it up. We had $14 in before the flop, and now the pot had reached $22 (less the rake) by the time it reached me. I could see the turn card for only $2, unless the small blind chose to raise. I rated to make my straight a little more than one time in 12 (four fives gave me the straight, out of 47 unseen cards), so I was almost getting fair pot odds right then and there. When I added in the money I was likely to collect if a 5 hit, this was an easy call. Kirk folded in the small blind. Just because it's cheap to see the turn doesn't mean you play anything. I had a hand that figured to gut a few people if I made it, if you can gut anyone $4 at a time.

It seemed odd to get this many callers with an ace on the board and no obvious draws, but there could have been a few ace-rag hands out there to go along with one-pair hands like 9-8 or 7-7, but here we had exactly the situation I'd been discussing. Kirk had seemed a little surprised when I'd made the claim.

The 5 came off right away, and not only did I have the stone-cold nuts, there weren't any flush draws possible. I could lose only if the board paired on the river, or if someone had been playing 9-7 or 9-6 and the requisite 6 or 7 came off on the river. A chop was possible, and for a moment I thought maybe even fairly likely, given how enthusiastic the betting became.

Only three of us played the turn. The big blind bet, a middle-position player raised, I flat-called (the big blind looked confident, and I figured I would either get more action driven from him now or more on the river by just calling here … I wouldn't argue with someone who believed it better to go ahead and make it three bets on my own, but the big blind really did have the look of someone who was thinking, "Come to Papa"), the big blind reraised (gosh, keeping one's eyes open sometimes works), the early raiser capped it, and I sat there wishing this was $200-$400, not $2-$4.

Some complete air ball hit the river, and this time it went bet-call-raise-call-call. With no reraise on the end, I knew I didn't even have to worry about a chopped pot, and when I turned over my hand, the other players just looked at me like I was the dumbest player they had ever seen (drawing to an inside straight!!!) as I raked in one of the larger pots of the night.

I didn't blame aces up and a set for being upset at losing with this toothless board, but when you play passively and let people in for one bet, you have to be prepared for this sort of thing.

Kirk had been the small blind and had gotten out cheaply, and said, "Hey, you weren't kidding when you talked about playing inside straights."

"I don't make a career out of drawing to them," I explained. "You have to pick your spots, but look how much money was in the pot when I called. If you'd popped it from the small blind and someone else had raised, I'd have let it go, but you hadn't been raising wildly, especially into large groups. It seemed pretty safe, and you saw how the hand's unexpected nature allowed me to collect extra bets."

I'd been quite lucky to hit the insider, and got especially lucky that two opponents had strong hands and bet them, but that just turned a positive-expectation play into a big winner, to say nothing of having two players on tilt and everyone else apparently in the mood to play any two cards the rest of the way. I wouldn't figure an expected tilt factor to be worth much equity when making most decisions to go for an inside straight, but it's worth something, sometimes a lot if you know your opponents.

"Count up how many bets went in at the $4 level," I told Kirk, "and you have your basic textbook example of how implied odds can make an inside-straight draw right by a wide margin."

The circumstances have to be just right, of course: You're going to need late position and a loose-passive game to make most inside-straight plays pay off. I tell the tale mostly to remind people how those "always" and "never" statements usually represent unduly rigid thinking.

Of course, it was nice to win the pot for a few other reasons. The cash got me even from a flopped flush that had just gone down in flames, and it was nice to have the inside-straight story help me build a bridge to Kirk's friendship. Besides, he was relatively new to poker, and I wanted him to learn more, so he would stay with poker and not make some kind of conversion to another card game. He's a nice guy, and we wouldn't want to lose Kirk to Bridge, either.

Andrew N.S. ("Andy") Glazer, "The Poker Pundit," is Card Player's tournament poker editor and welcomes your questions. His New Year's resolutions include winning more tournaments, writing a higher percentage of columns that discuss actual hands instead of philosophical and psychological matters, and cutting out his playful use of Star Trek references in his writing. He also claims, "Two out of three ain't bad."