7-A Five Card Draw

[Notorious G.O.B.]

This game's sprung up on the Boss Poker Network, anyone want to comment on proper strategy? In case you don't know, it's five card draw played with a stripped deck. When four handed or less, all 2's-6's are removed. Five handed, the sixes are put back in the deck. A789T is a straight unless five handed, in which case A6789 is a straight instead. Thanks.

[Al Mirpuri]

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This game's sprung up on the Boss Poker Network, anyone want to comment on proper strategy? In case you don't know, it's five card draw played with a stripped deck. When four handed or less, all 2's-6's are removed. Five handed, the sixes are put back in the deck. A789T is a straight unless five handed, in which case A6789 is a straight instead. Thanks.

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How longs this been around? How many play? For what stakes?

As for the strategy, I have no idea.

[MarkGritter]

I can't think that proper draw strategy would change all that much, it is still important to start with a big pair or better.

I did a couple quick experiments at twodimes. With the normal 52-card deck a Q-high flush draw is about a 4:1 dog to a pair of aces. With deueces through sixes removed it is more like a 5.6:1 dog.

On the other hand, a J-high OESD is only 17% with the full deck but nearly 30% with the smaller deck.

So, it might be more feasible to play straight draws in this variant (getting 3:1 or better in the big blind it is probably mandatory!) but you can expect to see a lot more boats. A two pair will fill up 4/47 (8.5%) of the time (more or less depending on what the opponents hold) with the full deck but 4/23 (17%) with the chopped deck.

Aces are worse off vs. KK with the short deck too, sliding from 77% to 69%.

So:
1. probability of boating up is stronger, but difference between pairs is smaller.
2. probability of making a flush is about the same but less chance that it will be good due to #1
3. probability of making a straight goes up, apparently enough to outweigh #1.

I don't think this makes a big difference, marginal hands are still going to be marginal. It might make sense to find places to play straight draws (it looks, from twodimes, as if they are not significantly worse off via two pair than just a big pair.)

I think it would be interesting to examine how the game balance changes across different deck sizes. Obviously the probability of making a flush does not change much if the number of suits is fixed, so they should be very powerful in larger decks. Straights benefit from having fewer cards available but at some point you end up at a game like Royal Hold'em where they are useless because the winner is going to be a boat or quads. Pair hands also benefit from fewer cards in the deck because they can more easily hit matching cards.

[Siegmund]

I have a "Hoyle" from 1924 that, in the section on 5-card draw, mentions the game is sometimes played with elevens and twelves added to make a 60-card pack, so that cards don't have to be reshuffled when eight or ten people play. It also suggests that changing the size of the deck had been used in the past as a trick to throw off good players' senses of what the odds were, but that the trick usually backfired since the good players were better able to adapt to the new conditions than the semi-competent players trying to get an edge from an unfamiliar game were.

[Notorious G.O.B.]

eh, like six months. There's usually a five/ten game going, not to sure about smaller games, and I don't think I've seen a bigger one run.

[gusmahler]

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So, it might be more feasible to play straight draws in this variant (getting 3:1 or better in the big blind it is probably mandatory!) but you can expect to see a lot more boats.

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In the other thread about this form of poker, the poster notes that a flush beats a boat. Does twodimes know that?

[Notorious G.O.B.]

That's not the case in this game, not on this site, anyway.

[Siegmund]

Apparently this game is spread live, too. In Australia, where there are still casinos that spread live five-card draw, the official rules of five-card draw actually state that, when a game falls to four or fewer players, the pack may be reduced to 32 cards if all of the players already in the game so agree.

It's an interesting question whether one ought to agree to such a change. (If you've never studied the short pack version, obviously you should say no; but do you have to know anything more than "flushes are harder to make than I am used to" and re-count outs appropriately to adjust?)

[stripsqueez]

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Apparently this game is spread live, too. In Australia

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yeah i've played this a lot in Oz although not for a few years - it was only 7's up when i played - with a max of 5 at the table UTG sits out - it was always played half pot - naturally a flush beats a full

it is like more normal versions of draw very opponent dependant - although you get better hands its a short handed game so i used to win in the game i regularly played by bluffing a lot because the other guys played too tight

stripsqueez - chickenhawk

[Tom Bayes]

With the 32 card deck (stripped of deuces through sixes), there are 32 C 5=201376 5-card poker hands. The probability given below is the chance of obtaining said hand with the first five cards. I performed these calcualtions similar to what is found here for five-card hands with the standard 52 card deck.

straight flush 20 .000099

4-of-a-kind 224 .00111

full house 1,344 .00667

flush 204 .00101

straight 5,100 .0253

3-of-a-kind 10,752 .0534

two pairs 24,192 .1201

pair 107,520 .5339

high card 52,020 .2583

Compared to the probabilities for standard 5CD, we see that almost every hand that is a pair or better is easier to obtain with the stripped deck. One pair is actually more common than no pair and you will be dealt one pair over half the time. The chance of two pair increases from 4.75% to 12%. It will also become easier hit the four-outer and fill up.

You will be dealt trips in the new game about 5.3% of the time, which is slightly more common than 2 pair in standard game. Interestingly, pat straights are much easier to obtain and you will get one 2.5% of the time (slightly more common than pat trips in standard draw) instead of 0.4% in the normal game.

Pat full houses, quads, and straight flushes are still rare but not nearly as rare in stripped deck as with the full deck.

The biggest twist is that flushes become LESS likely with the stripped deck. Your chance of being dealt a pat flush with the 32 card deck is about half of what is was with the
standard deck (0.1% to 0.2%). Hitting a flush draw is also more difficult, as what used to be a 9-outer is now only a 4-outer, albeit to a smaller deck. Hitting a flush draw before was 9/47 = ~19%; now is 4/27= ~15%.

A flush SHOULD outrank all hands except for the straight flush in this game. I do not know if it is played this way or not.

I've never played draw with a stripped deck. My only experience with stripped deck play is with the Royal Holdem game at UB, played with the 20 card deck (tens through aces). I suspect taking advantage of those who don't understand the combinatorial consequences of stripping
the deck is much of the advantage a good player would have. I would expect the typical mediocre-to-bad player would play using the same strategies that they use for normal 5CD.