Five Card Draw and Learning How to Bluff
Players who are still learning the game of poker--and who isn't still learning this game?--often have a clearly ambivalent relationship with bluffing. Like a struggling relationship, these players break up to make up with bluffing, and then around they go again, never quite knowing where they stand, unsure just how big a part of their poker game bluffing really needs to be.
These players know that bluffing is necessary in poker, they know that the best players use bluffing to best effect, and they know that they need to learn how to bluff better so as to win more money. However, deciding how much to bluff, and when, can be a lifelong riddle.
If you are in this stage of learning, or even if you're an experienced player looking to brush up on your bluffing skills, a little old school Five Card Draw may be just what the doctor ordered.
Five Card Draw Table Image
5 Card Draw is a terrific laboratory to learn a variety of poker skills, and table image is one of these areas that can be studied through this game.
When you are playing Five Card Draw, you always have to be actively creating and maintaining your table image. Because there are only two betting rounds, and also because 5 Card Draw is often a home game with friends or colleagues, players divide other players into categories:
- Someone who usually or even always only bets with strong hands.
- Someone who is capable of bluffing or bluffs too much.
In order to successfully bluff in this game, you want to tend towards the former category. If you can carefully cultivate the image that you bet aggressively only with premium hands, the ground is laid for the best bluffing strategy in Five Card Draw.
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No Thanks, I Have What I Need
The best bluffing strategy in 5 Card Draw is usually to raise the pot on the first round of betting, do not draw any cards, and then raise again on the second round of betting. At this point, you are conveying to your opponents that they should fold if they know what's good for them.
And there you are looking at a terrible hand, you've got absolutely nothing!
Moments like these are why we believe that returning to Five Card Draw, even for a fairly experienced poker player, can help you make your bluffs more convincing.
If you can sit there with nothing, draw nothing, and then bet again and make your opponents believe that they can't beat your hand, you know how to bluff, my friend, or are learning quickly.
Many poker players would be a lot better poker players if they mastered this simplest of all bluffing strategies--bluff like you have an excellent hand, when in reality you have pure crap.
This moment is a hotbed of poker psychology, and as we all know psychology is a critical factor in poker success. Players who can stomach this moment deserve the money they win.
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Five Card Draw and Poker Fundamentals
Whenever we hear about Five Card Draw being "dead," we feel a tiny bit sad for new players who never bother to play 5 Card Draw because Hold'em is what's cool and everybody's doing it.
It's a shame when newer players "move on" from Five Card Draw before they've even properly learned it. These players are masters of "semi-bluffing" in Hold'em, they know how to mathematically calculate every out in the book, but they don't know how to sit there with nothing, bet heavily calmly, and make everyone at the table think they have the nuts.
And then they wonder why players who are capable of sudden, ballsy, gut-wrenching bluffs win more money than them at the Hold'em tables.
These players are like kids who won't eat their vegetables or NFL players who don't show up for training camp because they're already in good shape:
No, skipping vegetables probably won't cause you to get cancer at age 30, and no, skipping training camp probably won't cause you to forget how to play football, but by skipping those "basic" things, you may also missing out on a chance to get that much stronger.
In poker, every little bit counts.
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