When Your Opponent Could Have One of Several Draws

In the last example, we knew exactly what our holdem opponent’s draw was. In Texas Holdem practice, you rarely will. You may know that he’s likely to be drawing, but you won’t know whether he has a straight draw, a flush draw, bottom pair, etc.

Say you again have A♥ A♠ on the turn in a $100 pot with $400 behind. But now the board is J♦ T♦ 6♣ 9♣. You are fairly sure your opponent has a draw, but you don’t know whether it’s a diamond draw or a straight draw. It could even be a backdoor club draw with a hand like A ♣ T♣.

Whatever draw he has, he’s likely to have about eight or nine outs (though big combination straight, flush, and pair draws are also possible). So he’s still likely to be approximately 4-to-l against to make his poker hand.

Unfortunately, your holdem opponent won’t make it easy on you and tell you which draw he has. If any of the "obvious" draws comes in, that is any diamond, king, queen, eight, or seven, he may bluff even if the card didn’t complete his poker hand.

Now you can’t just fold on the river if a diamond comes and your opponent bets. Depending on exactly how much he bets and how often he bluffs, you may still fold, or you may call. But either way, you lose money: if you call, sometimes you’ll be paying him off, and if you fold, sometimes you’ll be getting bluffed out.

Since your opponent can now sometimes make money from you on the river, his implied odds are significantly better than the pot odds. A bet offering slightly worse than his pot odds doesn’t cut it anymore. You have to bet a larger amount to prevent him from calling profitably.

If your Texas Holdem opponent could hold one of several draws, bet a larger amount than you would if you knew which draw he had.

Good luck.