Poker Pat Hand
Jacks or Better Video Poker Strategy. You probably remember that we mentioned the importance of playing the game correctly, right? Below we offer some guidelines for playing the game correctly. The first thing to understand is that if you have a pat hand made up of a 4. Pat McAfee was born to Tim and Sally McAfee on May 2, 1987 in Plum, Pennsylvania. He attended Plum High School, playing soccer, volleyball and football; and received collegiate interest for all three. As a senior, he borrowed $100 from a friend and played poker at an illegal club, turning it into $1,400.
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5 Card Draw is one of the most popular variations of poker. It’s also the easiest to understand, making it the perfect game for a night with friends. However, its simplicity has led to one of the most challenging situations for anyone playing this game—pat hand.
In draw poker, pat hand refers to a 5-card hand—straight, flush, full house, four-of-a-kind, or straight flush—that you can’t improve. It’s possibly the best hand in the game or has a very high chance of winning. However, it can be tough to extract value from it because you can’t draw new cards.
Pat hand is easy to understand but challenging to play. We’ll discuss everything about it to help you understand why it can be dangerous to have a pat hand when playing 5 Card Draw. We’re also going to share one easy strategy that can help you extract value from a pat hand.
Pat Hand: A Double-Edged Sword
To help you understand why a pat hand can be a double-edged sword, let’s quickly go through the rules of playing 5 Card Draw:
- To start the game, each player should agree to an amount as their initial bet, then place it at the center of the table.
- Players will receive five cards each, face down, and get a chance to inspect their cards.
- Players can discard the cards they don’t need to try and improve their hands. Note: Each player can only discard a maximum of three cards.
- For the second round, players can fold or choose to stay in the game. The ante is twice the amount of the initial bet they placed.
- Showdown starts, and the player with the best hand wins the pot.
5 Card Draw is so simple that even with such a brief explanation, you’ll know how to play it.
However, this game includes 5-card hands in the rankings, and each player gets five cards at the start of the game. So, there’s a possibility that a player picks up any of these made hands:
- Straight (5♠ 6♦ 7♥ 8♠ 9♣)
- Flush (3♥ 5♥ 8♥ T♥ K♥)
- Full House (8♣ 8♦ 8♥ K♦ K♥)
- Four-of-a-Kind (5♣ 5♦ 5♥ 5♠ J♠)
- Straight Flush (8♣ 9♣ T♣ J♣ Q♣)
If you happen to draw any of these hands, you have a pat hand. What this means is that you can’t discard anything to improve your current hand. It’s a dominant hand because there are only two betting rounds in a 5 Card Draw, and players only have one chance to improve their ranking. So, if you have a pat hand, it’s likely that you’ll win the game.
When playing 5 Card Draw, the only data that you can get from your opponent is the number of cards that they discard.
You can’t see any of your opponents’ cards, and there are no community cards that you can use as a basis for your decisions. So, every move that you’ll make will depend on the number of cards that your opponents discard—the more cards they draw, the weaker their hands are.
If you have a weak hand, say a low-value pair, and your opponent only discards one card, it’s most likely that they have a strong hand, maybe even a four-of-a-kind! The data that you’re getting in a 5 Card Draw is only from one source, but it’s accurate in figuring out how your hand stacks up against the other players.
It’s where things get hard for players with a pat hand. If you want to improve your hand, you’ll need to discard some of your cards to draw new ones. There’s only one more betting round after that, and whatever you discard will be the basis of your opponents on whether they call or fold.
If you want to extract value from one round, you have to keep everyone in the game. The only way to do that is to make them think that your hand is weaker than what they have. Unfortunately, you only have one discarding round, leaving you with only three options:
- If you discard anything, you break a strong hand. If you have a four-of-a-kind, you can discard one, and it’ll still be the strongest in the game. But if you break a straight, flush, or straight flush, you have air unless you get lucky with your draw.
- If you split a full house, others might beat you. Let’s say you have 4♣ 4♦ 4♥ K♦ K♥, and you decide to discard K♦ K♥. Three-of-a-kind is still a relatively strong hand, but it increases the chances that someone beats your hand.
- If you don’t discard anything, everyone folds. If you have a straight, flush, or straight flush, it’s the only path that you can take, but the most logical step for your opponents is to fold.
When you’re playing 5 Card Draw, you want to have the best hand while creating an impression that you have a weak hand. That’s the only way for you to extract value in every game. So, the question is: is a pat hand strong or weak?
The answer depends on how well you’ve played other hands and make yourself unpredictable.
Easiest Strategy to Extract Value From a Pat Hand
You might be wondering how you can make yourself unpredictable in a game that is so simple as 5 Card Draw, right? After all, it plays nothing like the more sophisticated 5 Card Stud, which many people still think is the same thing and can’t tell what’s the difference between the two.
There’s a thin line in this strategy that allows a player to take advantage of bluffing, but not in a way that you might expect. In other poker variations, you want to have the right mix of bluffing and value betting to keep your opponents guessing.
In a 5 Card Draw, you want to keep bluffing until they catch you.
If you have a pair or anything remotely playable, don’t discard anything. Most of the time, the other players will fold, especially when you do it for the first couple of times. It’s a source of steady profit, but the other players won’t let it pass. The more you bluff, the more likely you get caught, and that is what you want to happen.
You want your opponents to believe that bluffing is possible with 5 Card Draw, and you’re doing it to steal their initial bets. As soon as you get caught, stop bluffing. The next time you don’t discard anything is when you have a pat hand. Since you already created an impression that if you’re not discarding anything, you have a weak hand and you’re only trying to steal their bets, more players will join the second betting round.
The key to pulling off this strategy is to get caught bluffing, then stop, then make sure you get caught again. You want to do it continuously until you establish enough unpredictability. The more it happens, the harder it’ll be for your opponents to read through you, and the easier it’ll be for you to extract value from a pat hand.
Conclusion
Pat hand is, possibly, the best hand in the game, but you can only extract value from it if you play correctly. Poker has many variations, with different gameplay, but the one thing similar in all of them is that they’re always for the long game. I’m not aware of any poker variation that starts and ends in one round. It’ll always be a long game, and you can use each round to build an unfair advantage.
If you get caught bluffing in a 5 Card Draw, you may have lost that round, but you’ve already won the game. That’s because you’ve made yourself unpredictable for your opponents, making it easier to extract value from a pat hand or steal bets using your weak hands.
Related Articles
- 5 Card Draw vs. 5 Card Stud – Know the Differences
- How to Deal Razz Poker: Complete Guide
Introduction to 2-7 Triple Draw Poker
2-7 Triple Draw is a pretty old type of poker that has been neglected for quite some time. However, it is now coming back to the poker scene thanks to several bigshots who are reviving it, including Gus Hansen and Phil Galfond.
This game is a great way to introduce some diversity into your poker routine. If you are used to playing Hold’em and Omaha all the time, 2-7 triple draw poker will definitely fire up your passion for this game once again.
We are not saying this for no reason; in fact, we are quite confident that you will like this game because it is unique compared to all the others. This type of poker is also known as Deuce to Seven Triple Draw Lowball because the goal of the game is to make the lowest five-card combination in order to win.
In 2-7 triple draw poker, the lowest and most powerful combination is 2-3-4-5-7. If you are a poker novice, it might be challenging for you to get used to this peculiarity. However, after learning the ropes, the fun can begin!
Let’s move on and check out the rules of 2-7 Lowball poker and learn how to play it.
Pat Hand Pinball
2-7 Triple Draw Rules
2-7 Lowball is a vastly different game compared to any other poker game you have played so far. To be good at it and consistently win pots, you need to forget everything you have learned about poker before. You need to play against what seems like common sense.
Start by learning the basic rules and the flow of the game that we have presented below:
- 2-7 triple draw is a limit game, which means that it is played with a small and big blind.
- At the beginning of the game, every player is dealt five face down cards, one card at a time.
- The first betting round starts when all the players have five cards in their hands.
- After the first betting round, the first drawing round commences. In this round, players can replace any number of cards in their hands. They can also choose not to replace any, which is called “standing pat.”
- After the first dealing round, the second betting round begins. This cycle repeats itself two more times after two additional drawing rounds and betting rounds have finished.
- After that, the players are ready to show their cards and the winner is declared.
- The hands are counted from the highest card down.
- The winner in 2-7 triple draw poker is the one with the lowest and the “weakest” hand, in conventional terms.
- If two players have the same hand, they will split the pot.
- Ace is considered to be the High Card in this type of poker.
As you can see, at first, many things will not make sense when it comes to this type of poker. Remember that, unlike when playing Texas Hold’em, for example, straights and flushes are not desirable. The same goes for pairs.
Draw Poker Pat Hand
How to Play 2-7 Triple Draw Poker
Let’s learn about the basics of 2-7 triple draw Lowball poker and share some killer tips and tricks that will skyrocket your chances of winning in this unique game.
Dealer and Blinds
2-7 Triple Draw is always played with a maximum of 6 players at the table. Just like Hold’em, this game uses a dealer button and small/big blind buttons. The blinds are decided according to the position of the dealer. The player one position left to the dealer will place the small blind, whereas the player two positions left to the dealer places the big blind.
Each player is given one card at a time until all players at the table have five cards. After that, the drawing and betting rounds ensue, as we have demonstrated above. During these betting rounds, you may choose to call, raise, or fold, just like in any other type of poker.
You also have the option to discard between 1 and 5 cards in any of the three drawing rounds. If you discard between 1 and 4 cards, the replacement cards will be dealt to you all at once. If you discard all 5 cards, the dealer will first give you four cards, complete the dealing cycle, and then give you the last card.
As you know, you can also choose to “stand pat” and not replace any cards. But when should you do that? Check out the section below to find out.
Drawing Hands
Deciding how many cards you want to draw is not done intuitively. There are “pat hands,” “one-card hands,” “two-card hands,” and so on. Before entering a Deuce to Seven game, you should remember and understand the hands.
Pat Hands
When you receive a standing pat hand, all you need to do is start raising and start celebrating. The examples of such hands are:
- 7-5-4-3-2
- 7-6-5-3-2
- 8-5-4-3-2
If you hold any of these hands, don’t draw even one hand. If you hold a 9-7 combination, you should draw one card and try to replace the 9 with a smaller one.
One-Card Draw Hands
Poker Pat Hand
There are a lot of awesome hands that will put a smile on your face and require you to draw just one hand in order to end up with a monster hand. Some of those are:
- 7-4-3-2
- 7-5-4-2
- 6-4-3-2
- 6-5-3-2
- 6-5-4-2
Of course, you will have an additional card to these four. If it’s an ace or a 9, make sure to discard it and try to get a smaller one, like a 5, an 8, or a 3, depending on your hand. There are many other combinations in this group, but you can use these five to understand the principle.
Two-Card Draw Hands
These are the most common card combinations you will receive when playing 2-7 Lowball. They are good starting hands but they require some work in order to become excellent showdown hands. If you see these cards in addition to two high cards, make sure to discard the two unwanted ones.
- 4-3-2
- 7-3-2
- 5-3-2
- 5-4-2
- 7-4-2
- 7-5-2
Conclusion
2-7 Triple Draw poker is by far one of the most exciting variations of this game out there. Learning how to play it will help you understand poker strategies in general, and make it easier for you to play other popular poker types such as Razz or Omaha Hi-Lo.
Remember that the most important thing is to stay away from high cards and high hands. Straights and flushes are your worst enemies in this game — if you make smart drawing moves and avoid them, you’ll have a high chance of consistently winning rounds.
10 Feb 2020 Adam Shaw 0 Comments
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