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Why Five Card Draw is a Great Game for Beginners
I first started playing poker regularly in winter 2002. It was something I'd wanted to do for as long as I could remember. One day I decided to look up the rules on the internet, and organise a game. I discovered two pages, one called The Rules of Poker, and another called Seven Card Stud (I still have the printouts I made that day). The Rules of Poker described a version of Five Card Draw, which had obviously been developed from a home game because it had some unusual rules (you can only draw three cards, unless you have an ace, when you can draw four!). Seven Card Stud described a game that seemed more complex, and didn't explain it at all well, so we gave it a wide berth.
We began playing the bastardised version of draw described in the document, competing for bottletops (we were students after all), and making frequent reference to my printout for the hand rankings. Of course, I wasn't even slightly competent at the game back then and as a result I probably lost. Still, it gave me a taste for the game.
A year and a half and much reading and research later, I still think Draw is the game for beginners, and this is why:
- Its easier to understand what hand you have when there are only five cards involved. Since the most important thing in beginning poker is remembering the hand rankings, this is the most hassle-free game in which the learn them.
- You don't have the added complexity of upcards. Trying to work out what an opponent could have based on his upcards, or working out what the 'nuts' is based on community cards, just makes learning the game more daunting.
- There are only two rounds of betting; before the draw, and after. This means that you're not necessarily putting an awful lot of money in each hand, and also simplifies the game.
- It introduces you to poker psychology. Draw relies on psychology much more than hold'em (especially limit hold'em), because you have so little solid information about the strength of your opponents' hands. Draw teaches you to be observant, pick up on tells and body language, and intimidate the other players. The only clue you get to an opponent's hand is the number of cards they take.
Our games, of course, didn't teach these things straight away. The good thing was that we were all beginners, and as such no one player had a distinct advantage over the others. Even when we started playing for money, people were still looking at the hand rankings!
After we'd been playing for a while I tried to introduce Seven Card Stud into the mix, but unsurprisingly it didn't take off. Nobody wanted the added complexity of two more betting rounds, hole cards and upcards, and streets and rivers. People actually used to sit out of hands when I chose it as the dealer in a Dealer's Choice game.
That's my point. The best way to learn is to start simply, and add layers of complexity onto solid foundations. Make the game too complex and nobody will want to learn it in the first place. Draw is, outwardly at least, a simple game to learn and play. It may be considered unpopular - a dead game - but it provides the most solid foundations on which to build your poker knowledge.
