Deuce-To-7 Triple Draw has begun to increase in popularity in recent years. A number of online poker sites have incorporated this variant into both ring games and tournaments, and as part of mixed game rotations, it has become important for well-rounded players to understand this typically high-action game. You can find both limit and pot-limit tournaments at a number of different stakes levels, and it is also contested as a bracelet event at the World Series of Poker, where the 2011 champion, Leonard Martin, took home over $189,000 for his victory.
As the game is still relatively unknown to many players, there are opportunities to make money for those who get ahead of the average player’s learning curve. This article will give you a solid Deuce-To-7 Triple Draw general tournament strategy that you can use to come out ahead of your opponents.
Since all of the cards are hidden in Deuce-To-7 Triple Draw, it is essential that you get an early read on your opponents, to see what styles they are playing. Are they bluffing, particularly in late positions? Are they playing a tight game where they are only entering the pot with pat hands and one-card draws to the nuts? Will they lay down a hand to aggression? Will they chase against a pat hand, and can they be pushed off of their own pat hands? These are some of the questions you need to ask about each of your opponents, so that you can use that information to more successfully compete. Since there are only six players at the table, it should be relatively easy to amass this critical information about each of the others that surround you.
The early levels of a tournament, when the blinds are very low, are a good time to establish your table image. If you appear to be playing tight at first, it will serve you well later in the tournament, when you can get others to lay down their hands when you enter a pot at a point where the blinds have gotten much bigger. Focus on playing solid starting hands through the early and middle rounds of the tournament, including pat 7s and 8s, one-card draws to 7s and smooth 8s that won’t potentially make straights instead of lows (avoid hands like 4-5-6-7, for example), and two-card draws to 7s that include a deuce. Remember that the deuce is the most important card you can have in your hand, because you can’t make a seven without one, and neither can your opponents. Therefore, you should be hesitant to play a hand if it doesn’t already have a deuce in it, as the other players who are betting are very likely to have a deuce, making it even harder for you to wind up drawing one.
Once you have established yourself as a tight player (for example, you would NEVER draw three cards unless you were checking your option in the big blind), you can look to occasionally steal pots from late position when no one has entered before you. As long as you haven’t had to show an obvious bluff, you can pick spots to try and push timid players off of their more marginal hands, and in doing so, keep ahead of the escalating blinds and/or antes.
When you have a strong hand, you should almost always raise with it, and put in extra bets to narrow the field, unless you are sitting with a made “wheel” (2-3-4-5-7) and can let others lead the betting and try to keep more players in the hand. It is especially important to cut down the number of players in the hand when you have a vulnerable made hand, such as a rough eight (e.g. 8-7-6-3-2), as you want as few drawing to beat you as possible in that situation.
While bluffing can be difficult in a game with three draws, there will be opportunities within a tournament to confuse your opponents with trickery. Particularly in a pot-limit tourney, you can represent a strong made hand with a pot-sized bet at any point in the hand to try and take it down right then and there. Bets after the third draw can often force someone to lay down a hand that has a jack, queen or king, even if you yourself paired at the end. However, you need to remember that if you get caught more than once, you will need to avoid bluffing again until your table image has been restored.
In the late stages of a tournament, the blinds get to a level where most of your chips will be at risk in any hand you play. As a result, it is even more important to be able to pull off late position blind steals to keep pace with the stakes, and, in conjunction with that, use maximum aggression whenever you enter a pot to avoid getting blinded off. Your best bet is to push as hard as you possibly can with your top hands, hoping to get shorter stacks to commit with weaker hands, or bigger stacks to make bad decisions in trying to chase you down.
One of the most important things to remember about tournament play is that you will not cash the majority of the time. Also, most of the money in a tournament goes to the top few finishers. As a result, you will need to be comfortable making riskier plays with marginal hands, especially late in the tourney, in order to avoid either just missing the money or only making a small cash, which pays just slightly more than your buy-in. If you are only comfortable playing a strictly tight style, you should probably avoid tournaments and stay with cash games, where you can play a solid game and grind out an hourly profit.
While the ideas in this article are meant specifically for tournament play, remember that most of the strategy you will employ in Deuce-To-7 Triple Draw tourneys is the same as strong cash game play. You should read the other articles here at PokerWorks that teach those techniques, and combine them with the information in this article to be successful in Deuce-To-7 Triple Draw tournaments.
Deuce to 7 Triple Draw - Start Here!
An Introduction to How to Play Deuce to Seven Triple Draw
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