5 Card Draw (4) - Opponents

Introduction

In this article

• How you read opponents and gather information
  
• What literature you can use
  

Reading and gathering information

The information you will gather and base your reads upon in 5CD can be summarized in the following five interrelated elements:

• The draw (the number of cards your opponents fold)
• The betting (is it a raise, a call or a check in BB)
• The position the player acts from
• The previous actions along with previous holdings from a player – required from previous hand history.
• Certain features or observations discovered about a player: if he is actively chatty, has problems with ”anger management”, the speed he bets, checks or folds.

Element number 5 is perhaps something more abstract but when I play I am actually finding valuable things as far as the ”speed” of betting online. This is not a subject I will treat in this article. I have won a considerable amount from ”angry” and sometimes even drunk players. I do not what you to put emphasize in this type of analysis in the beginning – try to focus more on the four other parts.

The elements should be remembered when you make player notes and then you should be able to deduce an entire ”read” or image of your opponent. If you assiduously work this way you will have a clear edge on your opponents and you will easily beat the game by using the concepts and strategies you picked up from previous chapters.

There is a very good idea to work actively with ”player notes”. A good way to do this is you will write down the betting rounds (pre draw and post draw), the position, the drawing and last the holdings, given there was a showdown. I take my player notes very seriously and so should you - it will give good results. Here is an example.

In this example I found a very bad player with quite extreme passed actions. I also use a ranking/scale that concludes a general impression of the player; e.g. to what level he is a ”maniac”. In this case I concluded he is pretty much a maniac overall since the sessions we played he went more or less nuts with a lot of hands. In addition, I try to look at what type of aggression he uses and how ”loose” he is with his various holdings. You may naturally add more parametres to your player notes. This is one simple way I make players notes by and it has been found very useful for me (and amusing too in some cases).

Hand 1:

Predraw: raised AKQ high UTG. Discarded 2. Postdraw: Continuation bet AKQhigh unimproved.

Hand 2:

Predraw: makes plays and ”stands pat” too often. Sometimes with two pair but usually with nothing.

Hand 3:

Predraw: defends BB almost all the time – any pair any high card. Especially from late raisers.

Maniac level: 10

Aggression: 10

Looseness: 10

While you are participating in pots, and even if you are not in the pot but if you have paid your first bb, you have the chance to gather infomation on players' actions and holdings. You can even see mucked hands in the showdowns through the hand history option.

You should actively do so and make notes as much as possible when you find hands with relevance. You will by doing so be able to deduce and conclude how often a player raises, calls, bluffs, overplays or misrepresents a hand.

You will also be able to see how a good player valuebets and gets paid more often. So be active and make player notes on the whole spectrum of players – not only the weaker ones. Once you can tell the weaknesses of a bad or a good player you will surely gain an edge in many situations and hence you will make the correct raises, valuebets, folds or calls.

I believe that this approach is extremly valuable in 5CD and you must work notoriously with  observations and information gathering in order to become a winning player.

What I would like to elaborate further on is how one could go above and interpret some common actions in a ring game. I have chosen some cases that I consider common. What I try to assess is the possible ranges of hands that various players come in with in a pot (either through raising or calling from different positions). It will always be a rough estimate because there are still those ”funky” players who will call two pair (any two pair) first in with the intention of betting post draw and the same players could be calling a four flush and make the same play (to balance their two pair). If we disregard the more unusual cases, below is a table of usual spots in a game along with the indications of what the respective action could imply.

5 Card Draw Help: Literature

A useful book to many 5CD-fanatics on more advanced strategies is ”Poker Strategy: Winning with Game Theory” by the mathematician Nesmith Ankeny. It was published in 1981. The choice of game in the book is ”5CD jack-or-better” (same rules as regular 5CD but you will need jack or better to open). This particular game is not to be found online or in the Brick & Mortar environment today but the game is more or less in complete analogy with regular 5CD since it involves two betting rounds and similiar carding techniques.

A mathematical background is not needed although it helps a lot. Ankeny is describing the pre draw process along with hand selection and also the part of drawing and acting after the draw. There are many interesting things you will find as far as the post draw concepts. Ankeny is presenting many suggestions and solutions  concerning how to not give away information about the strength of your hand. He is preaching that if you are dealt trips you should always discard 1. By doing so consistently you will be able play many other interesting ranges of hands and also get paid more. I would strongly recommend this book if you are interested to become a 5CD-player on a higher level.

Doyle Brunson's Super System (part I) was a major success and one of the first books many beginning pokerplayers bought. The chapter everybody was interested in was naturally Doyle's personally written section on NL Texas Holdem. This book was realeased 1979 and long before poker exploded online. It had a great impact on Holdem who eventually grew to become big the biggest poker game on the poker arena at the time being.

The game of 5CD was during the same period very popular and offered at several live Casinos in USA. I gather that Doyle was playing some 5CD back then band so he felt that the game should be covered in his book. The chapter on 5CD in Super System was written by the statitician and the psychology expert Mike Caro or ”the Mad Genious”. The section also involves 5CD draw with a joker which is a game that you rarely will find online.

Some of the concepts from Mike Caro could be useful but most of the text is not helping the modern reader as far as concepts and strategies for the existing online formats of the game. There is however a very useful odds chart in that could help beginning players to get a ”feel” of hand distribution and odds of improving hands.

I consider Mike Caro's contribution to Super System overall a great effort for the game of 5CD since it has inspired many to start playing the game. I think I would not recommend buying the book (Super System) since there is very little that will help you as far as 5CD-strategies when you play online today.

There are a few other books that should be mentioned. In Norman Zadehs book ”Winning Poker Systems” there are two chapters on pre and post draw play for FL 5CD and they are worth reading.

The romanian mathematican Catalin Barboianu has written ”Draw poker Odds, the Mathematics of Classical Poker”, which is a very good reference to mathematical and statistical facts in 5CD. The book is highly mathematical and there is less strategy concepts.

Final words

After reading this article I hope you feel motivated to get started playing the game and that you can see that there is a possible profit potential in the game. Furthermore I hope you have learnt a lot from the concepts and strategies given and that you will start using them once you get to the tables.

Even if there are lots of advantages to playing 5CD, including low variance, potentially good winning rates and weak competition, you will still have to practise. Study the action closely – even when you are not in pots - and make thorough player notes on your opponents.

I think though when you sit down for the first time you will enjoy the game because, in many other Games, you will have to wait for good holdings in order to participate in pots. If you follow the starting hands I recommended you will pick up a lot of strong hands more frequently, due the nature of the game and thus you will be able to play and participate more in the action. That is why the game is so fun!

If you have come this far and understood most of the article, you should have picked up a sound introduction to 5CD concepts and strategies. You should definitely revise it frequently and let everything sink in before you sit down and start to play.

Good luck with your game and may all your draws become monsters!

LINKS
Related Articles: 5 Card Draw (1) - Introduction 5 Card Draw (2) - Predraw and Draw 5 Card Draw (3) - Postdraw Related Quiz: 5 Card Draw Quiz (1) 5 Card Draw Quiz (2) 5 Card Draw Quiz (3)