Big draw: Shove or draw to it?

When you flop a flush draw with a straight draw.

How do you play it?



The way I see it you can either:

Shove if there's a good sized pot already and either take the pot down without a fight or be a small favourite to win a huge pot. This has the advantage of folding out hands that are ahead of you (bigger flush/straight draws).

Check/Call and draw to it knowing that it's probably going to get ugly on the turn by which stage you wont often have improved you hand and your chances of making your hand by the river will be low, limiting the size of a bet that you can call to see the river. There is the disadvantage here that when you make your hand, you may not get paid off very well.



I've recently adapted to check/calling if I'm drawing to the nuts, hoping to catch someone with a smaller draw and shoving if there's enough money in the pot for it to be worth it but only if I'm drawing to a small flush/weak straight.


I'm posting this because a lot people definately play these hands differently to the way I do, and I wouldn't mind hearing some opinions on how best to play it.

I generally play combo draws as if I'm holding an overpair to the board - i.e., bet. If someone plays back at me on the flop, depending on how agg and good villain is, I will play it as if it's top set (i.e., raise and shove). Combo draws are generally favorites to be the best hand by the river against a pair, so I play them as such.

There are a whole lot of exceptions I make based on board texture, how good the draws are, my position, how many people are in the pot, and how good the other players are, but I assume you're looking for general approaches rather than hard and fast rules.

I'm a bit curious why you'd just bet it. Assuming of course that your bet is a standard sized bet.

I want to either take down the pot then and there (i.e. become pot commited and have my opponents know it) or check call my way down. A standard sized bet seems dangerous to me because the turn play is just as ugly as if you check/called your way to it, most of the time you're going to get stranded there with your odds decimated (chance of improving on each the turn and river cards is a little over 25%, by seeing the turn 3/4 of the time you're going to suddenly find yourself a 1/4 chance of making your hand).


I would like to hear the "hard and fast rules" that you base your decisions on, from what I can tell you're a very good player and any extra information on how you make these decisions would be helpful.

Thanks for the compliment - I'm an okay player, there are a lot of guys here better than me , but I'll try to outline some of my thinking, sorry it's not too organized, maybe some of the other guys will expand/correct...

Getting aggressive w combo draws is obv a semi-bluff - but it's a semi-bluff with better equity than a simple straight or flush draw, and the equity is so good that I have no problem two barreling them. When I miss the turn and the river, I have to decide whether I can sell a made hand against whoever's called me down - if I don't think I can, such is life, two barrels worth of cash out the window...

Villain - what is villain likely holding given pf action and his tendencies? If a tight player opens utg, pairs and big A's make up the majority of his range. If he's any good, he's going to see aggression as overpairs to the board, sets, and draws. Is JJ+ a big part of his range on a T high board? If so, I'll play more aggressively. Against a looser player who could have lots of hands including sc's and smaller pairs utg, I'll still play aggressively, but I'm going to be wary that he's drawing to either a better flush or straight than I'm drawing to.

Is villain good/tight/aggressive? This changes the strategy a little bit - a better/tighter/passive player is more likely to laydown an overpair than a weaker/looser/aggressive player (who's more likely to pay you off when you hit a set of 55's, weak or good players?). Depending on how good/tight/agg he is, I may be playing to push him off the pot on the flop or playing more of a draw.

Position - I'm going to be more aggressive oop than in position (but that's true pretty much all the time, so...).

Board texture - is it obvious that I could have a combo draw, or is it hidden? If the board is JhTh5c, for example, and I start betting like crazy, it's not going to be too hard to put a combo draw in my range. If the board is 6c8h2c, it's not hard to put me potentially on a draw, but putting me on 7c9c would be tougher, and it may look more like I'm betting an overpair or a set. Of course, you also need to match board texture to what your range for villain is as well - if there are three broadway cards on the board and you think villain's range is likely QQ+/AK, you shouldn't expect him to fold easily.

Quality of the draws -if one or both of the draws are to the nuts, I'm much happier getting it all in as quickly as possible than w combo draws where both draws are relatively weak (say, a baby flush and a non-nut straight draw).

Multiway or HU - depending on who is still in a multiway pot, I sometimes slow down if I think the pot will get bigger. There's a tradeoff, since multiway it's more likely others are drawing and may have better draws to either the straight or to the flush. The stronger my draws are, the more likely I'll slow down multiway - if the draws are relatively weak, I'll play it faster.

In general (c9 just put this in a thread in HA), we should never be looking at folding combo draws - so if villain forces the pace on the flop, we need to keep up.

...id definitlry suggest pushing it/..either take the pot, or be a fav in a race...because, if you miss on turn, and villian bets...its all changed..your only drawing to one card now...so its much harder for you to cal..and if oyu hit it on river, the villian may know that you were drawing and you might not get any action at all..so for these reasons, id suggest raising/shoving the big overdraw like..