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?

New Myspace Page

I have added The Future Poker Star to Myspace. I think that it would be a good way to interact with other groups and people that are into poker as well as getting new readers and contributers to this blog. It will also be good to put faces to the names of people that leave comments on this site.

I have designed it as a page for the site as opposed to a personal page for me so if you have a Myspace page then feel free to add us.

The Future Poker Star Myspace Page

Poker Bankroll / Stats Spreadsheet

After searching forever for a simple but useful spreadsheet to track all my poker results I decided to make my own and share it with the world. The idea is that I can use it for tournaments, sit and go's, live games and cash games. I just put the result into the sheet after the game and I can review all my games and keep an eye on my bankroll. I have decided to make it last for 4 years, as Microsoft will probably update excel by then.


You don't need any macros running to use it and you don't need to know anything at all about Excel. It will give me information about how profitable certain games, the effects of playing more than one table at once, the return on my investments, the profitability of sites, venues and home games. and much more. The more that this is used, the more the stats will show you what is needed to improve in your game.

I'll use this page for any questions anyone might have while using it.

How to use:

Go to Personal Preferences page and add a site or venue where you play. Some have been added already but feel free to delete them.
When you play a game click on the Input page. This is where you will log your games after playing them. There are two sheets in one here, one for sit and go's or tournaments (blue), and one for ring games (purple). Make sure you put the data in for all of the requested columns. The Spreadsheet will take care of the rest.

Download Spreadsheet

Some things to note.

The date format at the moment is set as dd-mm-yy, so when you input the dates you must input them that way. For example, the 10th of February 2008 is 10-02-08 and not 02-10-08 as the Americans would use it. The sheet would read the above example as the 2nd of October 2008 which would cause errors when you analyze your data afterwards.

I have put a few sample entries in the Input and Personal Preferences pages to show you how to put them in, so just delete those.

The sites or venues that you play can be deleted but NOT if you have played there already and used it. This is important. It holds a maximum of 50.

The charts, graphs and tables will be very useful once you have input some data into it but as with all data analyzing, will be useless to start with. The more you use it the more it will help you.

This spreadsheet is obviously completely free, but if you could click on the bookmark button underneath this post and help spread the word then that would really be appreciated.

Dead Blog?

This is a quick update to let anyone that looks at this know that I'm not dead.... and neither is this blog.

I have been super busy lately preparing for this project and will let you all know about it very soon. I guess that right now you could banner this blog with "UNDER CONSTRUCTION", because I haven't launched the marketing for it yet to get people on here. I think it would be best to do it all at the same time and when I have written the tales of the bottom rung of this long poker ladder.

Check back soon for among other things: a downloadable bankroll manager, my truely ridiculas luck at 5-card draw, my first poker table brawl, 3d poker experiences, and a whole hell of a lot more.

On a side note, thanks to the 2 people that check my blog daily, and for the 155 people that have looked at it so far! Stay Tuned