Your average, run-of-the-mill poker strategy suggests that you see cards as cheaply as possible with drawing hands. The obvious thinking behind this strategy is that you don’t want to waste money on a non-made hand. But if you’ve ever seen some of the aggressive  high stakes players like Viktor “Isildur1” Blom  and Ilari “Ziigmund” Sahamies play, they don’t exactly stick to pot odds with drawing hands.

Instead, players like Blom and Sahamies raise quite frequently with drawing hands in hopes of adding more money to the pot and/or making opponents fold. Of course, you need to have a pretty solid knowledge of raising with draws before you bet $50 with a flush draw, and hopefully the following helps out.

Benefits of Raising with a Drawing Hand

Some of the main benefits to raising with a draw are that you show strength in your hand, and consistently keep opponents guessing as to what your hand is. Furthermore, you can force other players to fold even when you don’t have the advantage in a hand; even if you do get called by an opponent, you still have some outs to win.

Perhaps the main benefit to playing draws aggressively is that many opponents won’t realize you made your hand later on. For example, if two spades are on the board and you bet aggressively on a spade flush draw, the opponent will be less likely to fold when the third spade hits the board.

Example of Raising with a Draw

To illustrate how raising with a draw works, let’s assume that you are holding Q-J and your opponent has A-J. The board is A-5-8, which leaves you with nine outs for a flush, and your opponent with top pair and a good kicker. You lead off the flop betting with a $10 raise in a $20 pot, and your opponent counters with a $20 re-raise of their own (now $50 in the pot).

If you want to stay in the pot, you now have to bet $10, which is actually a good decision based on your 5:1 pot odds. After all, you have around a 4:1 chance of making your flush, which is better than the pot odds. And as mentioned before, if you do make the flush, your opponent will be less likely to put you on this hand, and they will put more money into the pot later.

Sure this example if fictional, but you can see how raising with a drawing hand can be profitable in certain instances. Keep in mind though that you really have to know your opponent well before making such a move, and you should be fairly confident that you’re drawing for the best hand.

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