Keep aces or draw? (MTT 5CD on Stars)

[List]

You're more likely to improve your aces than your inside straight flush draw, but your draw is more likely to be good when it hits. I would guess the probably of your aces winning unimproved here are <5%, possibly much less, and you can never call a bet post draw unimproved. I would probably draw to the straight/flush, and be careful putting in too many bets post draw against other 1 card draws when you improve.

[Tom Bayes]

I did some sloppy assumption-filled calculations this morning and I think I'm going to go ahead and switch my vote and go with "draw at the inside straight flush".

I'm not going to attempt to go through all of my dirty calculations (if there's enough interest, I can try to write up a little article about this situation and post it sometime, but it will take longer than I have today), but I started off assuming that we are up against 3 pairs (KK, QQ, JJ) and 2 draws (a flush draw and an open-ended straight draw). I also assumed that no one else has AA or is drawing at an ace-high flush. Further, I assumed we will check-fold if we fail to improve and will only win when everyone else misses and checks down, and that we win when we improve to aces-up or better against the other pairs and lose if either the straight or flush hits. I handwaved away the situations where we improve to aces-up and lose to someone hitting trips or better and situations where we hit miracle boats/quads and crush someone who makes a pat hand.

To make a long story short, my dirty calculations give us an EV of ~2.4 small bets when we draw at the aces.

The situation is a bit easier when we draw at our gutshot straight flush, as we will check-fold when we miss and we will bet when we hit. I again handwaved and assumed we always win when we hit our draw, which of course is not always true.

My rough figures (again showing no work) give us an EV of about 1.1 small bets when we hit our hand and no one pays us off. If just one player pays off our big bet, the EV is up to 3.1 small bets and we are doing better than drawing at aces, and it's even better if multiple players pay off, assuming we can get away from putting in lots of bets when we make a hand that is only 2nd best.

So in short, against all 5 opponents, you'll want to draw at the inside straight flush unless you are at a table that is so tight-passive that you will never get any action unless you are beat. I've played at a few tables at Planet Poker that fit this description (i.e. you draw all the nits and none of the calling stations). I don't believe a table this tight-passive exists on Stars.

Another exercise would be to see how we should play this hand when 1 player, 2 players, etc. fold pre-swap. Obviously at some point keeping the aces will be better.

CAVEAT EMPTOR: There could easily be some minor mistakes in my calculations. I have assumed a very specific distribution of hands for your opponents. I have assumed away certain events with low but non-zero probability, such as making a big hand and losing several bets to a monster.