My latest poker strategy article, When to Chase, is now appearing in the September 2015 issue of Two Plus Two Magazine. Here’s a taste:
Though popular, the strategy of checking and calling with a hand that can’t win unless it improves, in the hopes of getting paid off big when you do improve, is a poor one. Practitioners of this strategy tend to underestimate the value of betting and raising with draws and overestimate the amount they can win when they improve. The problem is that your opponents can see when a flush or straight draw gets there, which makes them unlikely to put money into the pot with lesser holdings.
All of that said, I did recently encounter a situation where I deliberately played a draw passively even though I believed I had a good chance of winning the pot immediately with a bluff. The point of this article is most emphatically not to encourage you to play draws passively in general, but rather to emphasize just how much the stars had to align to make this strategy the best.
Enjoy!
If you can easily post it, do you mind mentioning the article(s) about the importance of playing draws aggressively (mentioned in your opening sentence)?
Thanks for the great content.