How To Play Five Card Draw

OK, I'll admit it, I whored my self out for the sake of Google search rankings. What the title should probably be is... How the hell am I supposed to play five card draw?

I have been experimenting with the different types of poker recently since my convenient accident with limit poker and have came across 5 card draw on Pokerstars. Even though I know nothing about one of the oldest forms of poker other than the rules, it seems as though that's a hell of a lot more than most people on there!

The rules

• Everyone gets five hole cards face down.
• The betting takes place the same as no limit (raise, call or fold).
• When the betting is over you have the choice to throw away and replace as many of the five cards that you like.
• Another round of betting takes place .If you're still in the hand then you turn your cards over and see who has the best.

Simple.... right?

Well if you are used to No Limit Hold 'Em then the rules become second nature after a hand or two. But the intricate decisions are really baking my noodle. The following hand is a good example of what I mean:

I received (while on the big blind) :

Five people called the blind and I checked and had the choice to get rid of some cards. The choices are this:

1. Play it safe and keep in the hope of hitting another 6 (11.4%), hitting another pair (15.9%), hitting 3 of something else to give me a full house (1.0%), or having Christmas come early for quads (0.2%).

2.Keep in the hope of hitting one of the 8's to get my straight (8.5%).

3.Keep and go for the flush (no idea what the odds are here!).

4.Do what is called "Stand Pat" and keeping the lot of them. This would achieve nothing other than telling the table that I am perfectly confident with the hand I have got and I don't want to change any card. I think that this is the biggest bluff in poker.

I have looked up the odds of hitting my desired hand and have put it in (red brackets) next to it. The sensible thing here according to the odds is to keep my six's and try and improve on the hand because at least then I have a pair. But the same odds tell me that with the hand I have and the amount of players, the odds of at least one person having a better hand than me is 87.2% for the people still keeping up with the percentages, or 0.15:1 for our American friends, or extremely likely for the rest of us. So keeping the 6's isn't going to work out.

The straight and the flush is a shot in the dark. Maybe if the game didn't matter and I was just playing for fun I would have gone for the flush, but for the purpose of this experiment, every game matters and every game is a step towards my goal of becoming The Future Poker Star.

I decided to do an amature move and "Stand Pat". I kept all my cards and put a big raise in when it was my turn to bet. They all folded and I realized that this is old school poker. This is the poker that was played in the saloons 200 years ago by cowboys and gentlemen before poker was about advertising deals, internet player points and bonus codes, when a bluff involved looking your opponent in the eyes and saying you have them beat. A few clicks on a mouse was tough enough for me, but to do this live in a proper game would take one cool cat.

So the point of this post is the same as the point of this site. I'll leave this post up for the whole experiment for people to put their advise in here. How the hell do I play five card draw? Which hands should I be playing? What kind of strategy should I be using?