Drawing to straights and flushes in five card draw is generally a horrible idea
You are sitting under the gun playing five card draw online when you are dealt four hearts and an off suit jack. Your four flush even has an ace and a queen! You're getting really excited aren't you!
Drop the hand...Drop it now and cool off for a second.
The problem with drawing to try and complete four card flushes and straights in five card draw is that you are rarely being offered enough money to make this a reasonable play. If you don't quite understand, lets look at the following example:
Imagine you were to play one hundred hands of five card draw in a typical $2/$4 online draw game and in each hand you were dealt four cards to a flush. Lets also assume that you are going to play this hand every time until the showdown for this one hundred hand example. Some other assumptions:
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There are two opponents who have called the big blind, the small blind has folded.
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Total money in the pot is $7, your large blind, the two callers and the folded small blind.
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No money is put into the pot after the draw unless you complete your flush, in which one of your opponents will call one bet, the other will fold.
Okay now that the stage is set, lets take a look and see what will happen! The great news is that you are going to complete your flush 19.5 times during this 100 hand example. We didn't make that up either, the probability of completing your hand when drawing one card to four of the same suit is 19.5%. The even better news is that one of your dumb opponents is going to call your second round $4 bet every time. So over the course of the 19.5 hands that you win you are going to rake in an impressive $253.50. After subtracting your contribution of $117 we see that you have made a very nice $136.50. Not bad right?
Oh...did you forgot about the other 80.5 hands where you don't make your flush? We didn't and here is how that works out:
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You are going to spend $161 trying to hit that flush on the other 80.5 hands.
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If you remember, you only made $136.50 from making your flushes
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$136.50 + ($161.00) = ($24.50)
You just lost ($24.50) over 100 hands chasing flushes.
Now to make this even worse, our example is severely flawed! There are a few things going on that we didn't tell you about:
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Someone calling your second round bet every time will never happen.
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It is quite possible that your made flush will not win all 19.5 times it was completed.
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The likelihood of their being $7 in the pot every time you are dealt a four card flush will also probably never happen.
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This example doesn't even take the rake into account!
Everything here is tilted in your favor and it's still a losing proposition. The point we are trying to make is that the only time you should ever be drawing to flushes or straights in five card draw is when there is enough money in the pot to make it worth your time money. Generally speaking, you want a minimum of five to one odds on your money before the draw to even think about trying to complete a straight or a flush. If the odds are less than that, do yourself a favor and dump the hand. There are plenty of idiots who are going to keep on trying to hit and they will pay you off time and again.
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Poker Strategy 
