Poker News

Barbara Connors

What’s the fastest, most reliable way to lose money in this game? Make hands that look good, but just aren’t good enough to win. Second-best hands. Oh so promising, oh so seductive, but in the end … oh so deadly.

This is not about middling second-best hands like second pair, or top-pair-lousy-kicker, where you should probably know better. No, it’s those hands that actually look like they have a chance to win- bottom two pair, baby straights and flushes-that are most likely to suck you in and bleed you dry. And one of the most common, and costly, second-best hands is the sucker straight. This is the straight you make by using your hole cards to complete thelow end of a straight draw on the community board. An example would be holding 9-8 suited with a flop of Q-J-10 rainbow. It’s the low end of the straight, often referred to as the ignorant, idiot, or sucker straight.

Let’s say you limped in from late position with that 9-8 suited and caught a Q-J-10 flop. Since there was no preflop raise, it’s unlikely that any of your opponents are holding A-K, so there’s a good chance that you have the best hand now (though you’d be behind to K-9), but you must play this hand carefully. In a multiway pot, it’s easy to get out-drawn on the river. If any king appears on the board, your straight is probably toast, since so many of your opponents will play any ace. For that matter, if an ace appears, anybody holding a solitary king now has you beaten. If a nine shows up, that counterfeits part of your hand and any player with a king has a higher straight than yours.

The cards needed to make a better straight are exactly the high-value cards your opponents like to play. For this reason, you would actually be a little safer if you made a sucker straight in the lower ranges-like holding 4-3 on a 7-6-5 flop. Your opponents are less likely to be playing eights and nines than aces and kings. So there will be less chance that another player has already made, or is drawing to,a higher straight.

Even worse than flopping a sucker straight is drawing to one. If you hold that same 9-8 again and the flop comes J-T-3 rainbow, technically you have an open-ender with eight outs, but really only four of those outs are good. If a seven comes on the turn you will have the nuts, but if a queen shows up, you’ll be in sucker territory. But worst of all is drawing to the low end of the straight with only one card. If you hold 9-8 on a board of 9-10-J, you’ll have to get very lucky indeed to pull out a win. Now even a seven might not do you much good, since anybody holding a single eight will chop the pot with you, and a queen could still kill you. True, you have bottom pair to go along with your draw, but all that really means is that you have two extremely weak draws on this flop, instead of one.

Sucker straights are difficult because you can’t really play them aggressively; you can never be sure where you’re at. They are defensive hands. Crossyour- fingers-and-hope-they-hold-up hands. If you commit to playing one all the way through, you’ll simply have to trust that luck will be on your side. Words like hope and luck might be good words to live by, but they’re sure not good words to play poker by.

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