Five Card Draw

Hi
I've been thinking about starting to play Five Card Draw.
Can anyone recommend any books?
Or have there been written any books at all?

[CarlNiclas]

Mason's book "Winning Concepts in Draw & Lowball" is probably your best alternative.

[benkahuna]

There's a very advanced, very probability based section in the original super system written by mike caro who is supposed to have been the best 5 card draw player ever.

What do you mean by "original super system"?

[jakethebake]

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Hi
I've been thinking about starting to play Five Card Draw.


[/ QUOTE ]

Where are you planning to do this?

[Tom Bayes]

[ QUOTE ]
Hi
I've been thinking about starting to play Five Card Draw.
Can anyone recommend any books?
Or have there been written any books at all?

[/ QUOTE ]

OK, time for standard Tom Bayes five card draw spiel.

The standard books (as already mentioned) are:
Mason Malmuth "Winning Concepts in Draw and Lowball" (2+2)
Mike Caro's chapter in Doyle Brunson's "SuperSystem" (not SuperSystem II which just came out a year ago)

Some out-of-print references you might find on E-Bay or Amazon that I have that are decent include:
Norman Zadeh "Winning Poker Systems"
Albert Morehead "How to Play Winning Poker"
Michael Weisenberg "Free Money"

The problem with almost all of these books is that they assume an obsolete form of draw poker played with a 53-card deck (joker as the "bug"), jacks-or-better to open, played with antes. If you are planning on playing draw poker online, you will find it played with a 52-card deck (no joker), blinds, and you can open on anything.

Michael Weisenberg wrote a series of articles for CardPlayer Magazine on the 5-seated limit draw games with blinds, which is the game played on Paradise and PokerRoom. Here's a link to the main article

Search the archives at www.cardplayer.com to find others. Also check out the "Other Poker" forum here for more draw posts.

If you are planning on playing pot-limit draw (found at 24h or PokerRoom) and/or draw tournaments, you'll have to adjust some of the advice you'll read, as most of it meant for limit cash games. I like draw tournaments and find most draw players aren't very good at adjusting for changing tournament conditions.

[RatFink]

Pokerroom & affiliate sites are spreading it in Ring, MTT and STT formats.

[Tom Bayes]

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Pokerroom & affiliate sites are spreading it in Ring, MTT and STT formats.

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Yes, PokerRoom has both limit & pot-limit for cash games and pot-limit MTTs. The MTTs are $10+1 with one rebuy/one addon and draw about 100-150 players. PokerRoom plays with 5 player tables.

Paradise has limit cash games, also 5 player tables.

24h and the other B2B network skins (Unibet, Martin's Poker, etc.) have pot-limit cash games, SNGs and MTTs. The MTTs have buy-ins ranging from €5 to €50 (some with rebuys) and draw between 30-200 players depending on time of day and the buy-in. 24h plays with 6 players to a table.

Planet Poker has limit and pot-limit cash games (although it's rare that anything above a micro-limit game is running), and STTs and MTTs in limit, pot-limit and no-limit. Planet's tourneys used to attract a decent crowd a few years ago, but the games have really died here and the tournaments rarely have more than 25-30 players now. Planet uses 8-player tables.

o.k. I had no idea this was being spread. I can only imagine the fishiness of those games. I'll recommend an oldie but a goodie: Poker Strategy - Winning with Game Theory by Nesmith Ankeny.

[Tom Bayes]

If you are even semi-competent in draw, you'll do quite well online. The main problem with online draw cash games is the rake is pretty harsh, but still quite beatable. I prefer tournament play.

I've heard of but have never read Ankeny's book. It's apparently quite rare because if you can find it for sale, the price is always extremely high [img]/images/graemlins/mad.gif[/img]