5 Card Draw Odds

You are dealt two pair in a five card draw poker game and are playing Jacks or better/trips to win.  The pot is quite substantial by this time, but that’s not as important as your decision.  Do you take one card in an attempt to hit the full house, or do you take three cards in an attempt to hit three of a kind?  This is a five person game and all players are still in…it’s not as simple as you might think.

Being that the guy to act before me took only two cards I suspected he already had three of a kind, so I opted to take just one card in attempt to fill up (my pairs were 4s and 7s…hardly impressive).  Of course I didn’t hit the full house, but it got me thinking.  Is it more likely to hit the full house or the three of a kind if you throw three cards?  Well, it’s actually pretty close percentage-wise.  You have a 12% chance of hitting 3 of a kind when holding a pair and you have a 10% chance of hitting the full house when you are holding two pair.  Makes sense that they are close as you have three chances of hitting three of a kind while there are only two cards in the deck that help you.  But, you have only one chance at hitting the full house,though there are four cards in the deck that can help you.

Bottom line is, the guy in front of me confused me by taking only 2 cards at which point I figured I would need the full house to win.  In the end he had nothing, and I would have hit the third 7 I needed to win that pot (huge pot at that!) had I taken three cards.

~ by arleen on Thursday.March.19.2009.