Flopped flush draws are one of the most exciting things in
poker. You know that you have a big hand even though it’s not
yet a made hand, and the prospect of stacking someone when that
next card hits is always thrilling. Of course, you aren’t
always going to hit the winner, and you will need to play the
hand optimally in an effort to lose the least amount of money in
those situations where you just can’t catch. There will
inevitably be streaks of time where you just can’t seem to catch
a break no matter what you do. You can’t make a pair with AK and
you never hit your big draws. This is all part of poker, but the
best winning players know that they can reduce the effect of
this brutal side of the game by playing their draws as well as
possible.

1 Find out how likely it is to complete your draw (e.g. Completing a flush draw). All we have to do for this part is work out how many cards we have not seen, and then figure out how many of these unknown cards could make our draw and how many could not. We can then put these numbers together to get a pretty useful ratio. Be more inclined to bet when your non-made hand has a backdoor flush draw. Flush draw hands on the flop. Leading out or making a raise is going to be the strategy that sees the most long term success with flopped flush draws in limped pots. You’ll be putting the pressure on your opponents and they won’t be as likely to put you on a draw, with the reason being that most people play these types of hands very passively.

A flopped flush draw can mean a few different things. You
could either have one of a suit with three on the board, or two
to a suit with two on the board. Needless to say, you are much
more likely to get paid off when you have two of the suit in
your hand. Not only is your hand more deceptive, but it’s also
less likely that your opponent too is chasing after the
flush. Within these two different types of flopped flush draws
there will be some pieces of strategy that remain static and
some strategy that changes. No two flush draws are ever alike,
well, not usually anyway.

Limped Pots

Limped pots are the best way to add all kinds of deception to
your hand. If you are in the blinds or limped from somewhere else at the table, your
opponents will naturally be inclined to discount the likelihood
of you playing with a flush draw. For whatever reason, this is
the absolute easiest way to be completely deceptive with your
flush draw hands on the flop.

Leading out or making a raise is going to be the strategy
that sees the most long term success with flopped flush draws in
limped pots. You’ll be putting the pressure on your opponents
and they won’t be as likely to put you on a draw, with the
reason being that most people play these types of hands very
passively. Passive play and their correlation with draws is the
reason why calling bets is very detrimental to your success. If
you call bets on a draw heavy board and then only raise when the
draw hits, even the most amateur of poker players should be able
to pinpoint what type of hand you have.

Raised Pots

Raised pots are a bit trickier than limped pots in these
situations for the reason that they entail more risk. You’ll
have more money already invested into the pot, meaning that you
now have to put more money on the line with each street that you
play. With this understood, you need to be prepared and even
willing to get all of the money in the middle when you flop a
big draw.

With a raised pot, you are more likely to face a raise when you
bet, but you’ll also be more deceptive when you flat call than
if it was a limped pot. You see, in raised pots, players tend to
feel like their opponents are less likely to flop draws and are
more likely to have hands like pairs, over cards, and so on and
so forth. Where calling bets was weak and sub-optimal in limped
pots with flopped flush draws, it can easily stack the majority
of players when in a raised pot. Funny how that works, huh?

Three to a Flush

A flop with three to a flush is going to be the least likely
to get you paid and also the worst time to get all of your money
in the middle. The reason that it’s least likely to stack a
player is because your hand is going to be very apparent to any
thinking player. You can’t really be deceptive about it other
than to shove on the flop, and this is hardly going to be a
profitable move.

Even if you have the ace of hearts and the flop comes 6h 8h
2h, getting it all in on the flop won’t make sense in the
majority of situations. If you consider the hands that you are
likely going to get all in on this type of flop, it will usually
be polarized to sets and made flushes, with the odd over pair
mixed in. No matter how you look at it, another heart is both
not guaranteed to be a winner and is less likely to come.

If your opponent already has a made flush, two of your outs are
gone from the deck. If your opponent has a set, even a heart
will lose the hand for you if the board pairs. You should play
these types of hands passively and milk the most out of them
that you can, but do your best to wait until you have already
made the flush before you get too crazy.

Two to a Flush

This is the most frequent flush draw scenario and is also the
most likely to get you paid off. The value in these flush draws
is going to depend on a couple of different factors, all of
which are going to be known to you. First, is the board paired.
If the board is paired, your flush draw loses an awful lot of
value, even if it’s the nut flush draw.

Not only will there be
a better chance that your opponent will make a full house, but
you are going to have a tougher time extracting value from
smaller flushes when you hit. Pretend that the board reads Jh 5d
5h on the flop. If the 6h comes on the turn and you bet and get
a call, any river is going to be scary to your opponent. Imagine
that they have 8h 3h. Not only does a full house have them beat,
but so too does almost any other flush.

The next pertinent element to consider on these types of
flops is just how strong your draw is. If you have the nut flush
draw vs. the nut low draw, you are going to be a lot more
confident in your hand. Some players disregard their flush draw
strength and just assume that any made flush is going to be the
winning hand. The flaw with this approach has two parts. First,
a low flush can lose to a runner runner card that allows for a
four card flush to trump your turned low flush.

Second, you are going to frequently get your money in against better flushes
when the draw completes, if only for the fact that players stack
off less often on draw heavy boards with anything but the draw
itself. Playing flopped flush draws can be challenging, but when
you take a step back to analyze the hand in question, there
shouldn’t be anything all too mystifying.

Mathematics: Flushes & Straights : Simple Pot Odds : Implied Odds : Reverse Implied Odds

Watch SplitSuit's video on Flushes and Flush Draws for 8 hand histories involving strategy on playing flushes in Texas Hold'em.

You are on the flop with a pretty decent flush draw. You have two hearts in your hand and there are another two on the flop.

Unfortunately, some cool cat has made a bet, putting you in a tricky situation where you have to decide whether or not it is in your best interest to call to try and make the flush, or fold and save your money.

How To Play A Flush Draw

This is a prime example of where you are going to take advantage of 'pot odds' to work out whether or not it is worth making the call.

What are pot odds? What about flushes and straights?

Basically, just forget about the name if you haven't heard about it before, there's no need to let it throw you off. Just think of 'pot odds' as the method for finding out whether chasing after a draw (like a flush or straight) is going to be profitable. If you're on your toes, you might have already been able to guess that it is generally better to chase after a draw when the bet is small rather than large, but we'll get to that in a minute...

Pot odds will tell you whether or not to call certain sized bets to try and complete your flush or straight draw.

Why use pot odds?

Because it makes you money, of course.

If you always know whether the best option is to fold or call when you're stuck with a hand like a flush draw, you are going to be saving (and winning) yourself money in the long run. On top of that, pot odds are pretty simple to work out when you get the hang of it, so it will only take a split second to work out if you should call or fold the next time you're in a sticky drawing situation. How nice is that?

How to work out whether or not to call with a flush or straight draw.

Now, this is the meat of the article. But trust me on this one, the 'working-out' part is not as difficult as you might think, so give me a chance to explain it to you before you decide to knock it on the head. So here we go...

Essentially, there are two quick and easy parts to working out pot odds. The first is to work out how likely it is that you will make your flush or straight (or whatever the hell you are chasing after), and the second is to compare the size of the bet that you are facing with the size of the pot. Then we use a little bit of mathematical magic to figure out if we should make the call.

1] Find out how likely it is to complete your draw (e.g. completing a flush draw).

All we have to do for this part is work out how many cards we have not seen, and then figure out how many of these unknown cards could make our draw and how many could not.

We can then put these numbers together to get a pretty useful ratio. So, for example, if we have a diamond flush draw on the flop we can work out...

The maths.

There are 47 cards that we do not know about (52 minus the 2 cards we have and minus the 3 cards on the flop).

How To Flush A Well

• 9 of these unknown cards could complete our flush (13 diamonds in total minus 2 diamonds in our hand and the 2 diamonds on the flop).
• The other 38 cards will not complete our flush (47 unknown cards, minus the helpful 9 cards results in 38 useless ones).
• This gives us a ratio of 38:9, or scaled down... roughly 4:1.

So, at the end of all that nonsense we came out with a ratio of 4:1. This result is a pretty cool ratio, as it tells us that for every 4 times we get a useless card and miss our draw, 1 time will we get a useful card (a diamond) and complete our flush. Now all we need to do is put this figure to good use by comparing it to a similar ratio regarding the size of the bet that we are facing.

After you get your head around working out how many cards will help you and how many won't, the only tricky part is shortening a ratio like 38:9 down to something more manageable like 4:1. However, after you get used to pot odds you will just remember that things like flush draws are around 4:1 odds. To be honest, you won't even need to do this step the majority of the time, because there are very few ratios that you need to remember, so you can pick them off the top of your head and move on to step 2.

2] Compare the size of the bet to the size of the pot.

The title pretty much says it all here. Use your skills from the last step to work out a ratio for the size of the bet in comparison to the size of the pot. Just put the total pot size (our opponent's bet + the original pot) first in the ratio, and the bet size second. Here are a few quick examples for you...

• $20 bet into a $100 pot = 120:20 = 6:1
• $0.25 bet creating a total pot size of $1 = 1:0.25 = 4:1
• $40 bet creating a total pot size of $100 = 100:40 = 2.5:1

That should be enough to give you an idea of how to do the second step. In the interest of this example, I am going to say that our opponent (with a $200 stack) has bet $20 in to a $80 pot, giving us odds of 5:1 ($100:$20). This is going to come in very handy in the next step.

This odds calculation step is very simple, and the only tricky part is getting the big ratios down into more manageable ones. However, this gets a lot easier after a bit of practice, so there's no need to give up just yet if you're not fluent when it comes to working with ratios after the first 5 seconds. Give yourself a chance!

To speed up your pot odds calculations during play, try using the handy (and free) SPOC program.

3] Compare these two ratios.

Now then, we know how likely it is that we are going to complete our draw, and we have worked out our odds from the pot (pot odds, get it? It's just like magic I know.). All we have to do now is put these two ratios side to side and compare them...

• 5:1 pot odds
• 4:1 odds of completing our draw on the next card

The pot odds in this case are bigger than the odds of completing our draw, which means that we will be making more money in the long run for every time we hit according to these odds. Therefore we should CALL because we will win enough to make up for the times that we miss and lose our money.

If that doesn't make total sense, then just stick to these hard and fast rules if it makes things easier:

If your pot odds are bigger than your chances of hitting - CALL
If your pot odds are smaller than your chances of hitting - FOLD

So just think of bigger being better when it comes to pot odds. Furthermore, if you can remember back to the start of the article when we had the idea that calling smaller bets is better, you will be able to work out that small bets give you bigger pot odds - makes sense right? It really comes together quite beautifully after you get your head around it.

What if there are two cards to come?

In this article I have shown you how to work out pot odds for the next card only. However, when you are on the flop there are actually 2 cards to come, so shouldn't you work out the odds for improving to make the best hand over the next 2 cards instead of 1?

No, actually.

Even if there are 2 cards to come (i.e. you're on the flop), you should still only work out the odds of improving your hand for the next card only.

The reason for this is that if you work using odds for improving over two cards, you need to assume that you won't be paying any more money on the turn to see the river. Seeing as you cannot be sure of this (it's quite unlikely in most cases), you should work out your pot odds for the turn and river individually. This will save you from paying more money than you should to complete your draw.

I discuss this important principle in a little more detail on my page about the rule of 2 and 4 for pot odds. It's also one of the mistakes poker players make when using odds.

Note: The only time you use odds for 2 cards to come combined is when your opponent in all-in on the flop. In almost every other case, you take it one card at a time.

Playing flush and straight draws overview.

How To Play Against Flush Draw

I really tried hard to keep this article as short as possible, but then again I didn't want to make it vague and hazy so that you had no idea about what was going on. I'm hoping that after your first read-through that you will have a rough idea about how to work out when you should call or fold when on a flush or straight draw, but I am sure that it will take you another look over or two before it really starts to sink in. So I advise that you read over it again at least once.

The best way to get to grips with pot odds is to actually start working them out for yourself and trying them out in an actual game. It is all well and good reading about it and thinking that you know how to use them, but the true knowledge of pot odds comes from getting your hands dirty and putting your mind to work at the poker tables.

It honestly isn't that tough to use pot odds in your game, as it will take less than a session or two before you can use them comfortably during play. So trust me on this one, it is going to be well worth your while to spend a little time learning how to use pot odds, in return for always knowing whether to call or fold when you are on a draw. It will take a load off your mind and put more money in your pocket.

To help you out when it comes to your calculations, take a look at the article on simple pot odds. It should make it all a lot less daunting.

Go back to the sublime Texas Hold'em guide.

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