It’s one of the most dangerous hands for novice no-limit hold ’em players: straight draws, especially smaller straight draws, because you’re chasing to start with, and even if you pair up, you’re still at the mercy of big cards, which means you could be jeopardizing your stack by chasing two kinds of dicey hands.
But that kind of danger makes straight draws a hand that more experienced players can take advantage of.
Take Erick Lindgren, for instance. A young, aggressive poker star, Lindgren plays a lot of hands and believes he can bluff his way out of a lot of post-flop situations. That can mean collecting a lot of chips when he’s up against a predictable opponent.
“I’ll play a straight draw against the straight-forward guys–guys who are only raising with the big hands, the really tight players,” said Lindgren, who won the Party Poker Million and Ultimate Poker Classic during the last World Poker Tour season.
This is where you have to be able to put your opponent on a hand. You have to know his game and be able to break down his raising and calling patterns to determine what he’s holding.
Erick Lindgren’s hand
4 of clubs
6 of clubs
His opponent’s hand
Queen of spades
Queen of hearts
The flop
7 of spades
5 of hearts
3 of diamonds
Lindgren cited a hand where he held 4-6 of clubs and the flop came 7-5-3 rainbow.
“I got lucky,” said Lindgren, who plays against the public on Fulltiltpoker.com. “I had gin on the flop. I made a straight. The problem is, he’s not going to fold his two queens. He bets and I make a big raise on him, he’s just going to push in.”
The turn and the river were no help to either player, so Lindgren’s opponent was done because he didn’t have the discipline to get away from an overpair that might have looked good but wasn’t the best.
Lindgren read his opponent as a big-card player, and the opponent played true to the scouting report.
“You look for stubborn players to play those hands,” Lindgren said. “But I’m not going to play those hands against guys like Daniel (Negreanu) and Gus (Hansen) and Phil Ivey–guys who are super dangerous.
“Not only do they play a lot of hands, so I don’t know where they are in the hands starting, (but) they might have a trap hand like mine. Even though I have position,
I’m not inclined to mix it up with them.
“With the straight-forward guys, I’m much more inclined to give them a little gamble pre-flop in hopes of busting them later in the hand.”
Poker lingo
Rainbow: A flop with three different suits.
Overpair: A pair that beats the highest card on the board.
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srosenbloom@tribune.com
