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This article was written by blackrain79.com contributor Fran Ferlan.
Flush draws can be tricky to play in no-limit hold’em.
While a flush is a relatively strong hand, there are a lot of pitfalls to avoid when playing flush draws.
If you have a feeling you’re not getting your money’s worth when you do manage to hit a flush, or worse yet, you always seem to end up with only the second best flush, keep reading.
In this article, we’ll go over 4 most common flush draw mistakes you should avoid.
By following these tips, you’ll learn to play your drawing hands like a pro in no time.
Let’s get right into it.
Flush Draw Mistake #1: Playing Suited Junk Preflop
One of the most common amateur poker mistakes is playing too many hands preflop. This includes playing a lot of suited junk.
Suited junk refers to hands that have very poor playability post flop, but players play them regardless just because they’re suited.
Example of suited junk hands:
J♥3♥
8♠4♠
Q♦2♦
A lot of amateur poker players will play just about any suited hand hoping to make a flush post flop.
This is a huge mistake for a couple of reasons.
First of all, it’s actually quite rare to make a flush in no-limit hold’em.
If you have a suited hand, the chance of flopping a flush is only 0.8%.
You have a better chance of flopping a flush draw, but this is still far from likely.
The chance of flopping a flush draw with a suited hand is only about 11%.
This means that you will only flop a flush draw 1 out 10 times with a suited hand.
And even then, you need to rely on hitting your outs on future streets, which also won’t happen most of the time.
In no-limit hold’em, most draws don’t complete, and drawing hands are almost always an underdog against a made hand on the flop.
But let’s suppose you do get lucky and manage to make a flush post flop. This still doesn’t guarantee you’ll win the hand.
This brings us to another problem with playing suited junk, and that’s the fact that you’re not drawing to the strongest possible flush.
In other words, your hand can be dominated because your opponent may have an even stronger flush.
For example:
Let’s say you manage to hit a flush with a hand like J3s.
You can still potentially lose to any suited Ace, King or Queen.
That’s an insane number of hand combinations that potentially beat you, especially when you consider the fact that your opponents won’t have a lot of weaker combinations in their range.
So if you play suited junk, you will either miss the board completely, or potentially lose to a stronger flush.
And if you make a flush and your opponent doesn’t make a stronger flush, there’s no guarantee you’re going to get paid off anyway.
In other words, playing suited junk comes with plenty of risk with a very limited upside.
If you don’t make a flush, suited junk hands have very poor playability post flop.
Junk hands can make mediocre pairs at best, and will often get you in trouble due to inferior kickers.
A kicker is card in your hand that doesn’t help you make a certain hand combination, but can determine the winner of the hand if both players end up having the same hand combination.
For example, if both players have a top pair, the player with the better kicker wins.
Let’s say you make a top pair hand on the flop with a hand like Q2s.
Your hand is dominated by all the other Qx hands. Also, if any Ace or King comes on future streets, your hand will get relatively weaker.
Bottom line: suited junk is still junk, so avoid playing it altogether.
Instead, play hands with better post flop playability, like suited connectors and suited Aces.
Suited connectors have the ability to make straights as well as flushes, meaning they will connect with the board more often.
With suited Aces, you are always drawing to the strongest possible straight, so you don’t have to worry about the reverse implied odds.
Implied odds refer to the amount of money you can potentially earn on future streets if your draw completes.
Reverse implied odds refer to the amount of money you can lose if your draw completes, but your opponent ends up having an even stronger hand.
By the way, check out my recent video for the 5 highly profitable hands you should play more often.
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Flush Draw Mistake #2: Calling With Incorrect Pot Odds
Another common amatuer poker mistake is chasing just about any draw regardless of the pot odds they are getting on the call.
At its core, poker is a game based on math and probabilities. Making decisions without considering the math behind it means fighting a losing battle.
Most amateur poker players don’t bother with the poker math, claiming they’re more of a “feel player”, but this is a silly excuse.
Poker math is no more complicated than anything you learn in grade school.
When you have a drawing hand, you should always consider the pot odds to figure out whether or not you can call profitably.
Pot odds are the ratio of the current pot size and the price of the call. In other words, it’s a risk-to-reward ratio.
You should get into the habit of always calculating the pot odds, especially with drawing hands.
To calculate the pot odds, simply take the size of the pot, add the size of the bet you are facing, and then divide by that bet as well.
For example, let’s say the pot size is $150, and your opponent has bet $50.
So, you are risking $50 in order to win a total pot size of $200.
In this case, you are getting a 4:1 pot odds on a call, because 200 / 50 = 4.
After you calculate the pot odds, you can compare them with the chance of winning the hand to figure out whether or not you can call profitably.
If the pot odds are bigger than the odds of you winning the hand, you can call profitably. In other words, calling has a positive expected value (+EV) over the long run.
If you chase every draw with insufficient pot odds, you are bleeding money over the long run.
As mentioned, most draws don’t complete in no-limit hold’em, so you can only justify calling with a drawing hand if the reward justifies the risk.
By the way, check out my ultimate poker odds cheat sheet for a much deeper dive on pot odds.
Flush Draw Example Hand #1
You are dealt 7♦6♦ in the BB (big blind).
A tight and aggressive (TAG) player open-raises to 3x from the MP (middle position). You call.
Pot: 6.5 BB
Flop: K♦9♣3♦
You check. Villain bets 6.5 BB
You: ???
You should fold.
In this spot, you are not getting sufficient pot odds on a call, so you can’t call profitably.
Let’s calculate the pot odds first.
Risk (price of the call): 6.5 BB
Reward (pot size after villain’s bet): 13 BB
Pot odds: 2:1
Quick tip: when you face a pot-sized bet, you are getting 2:1 odds on a call. When you face a half-pot bet, you are getting 3:1 odds on a call.
Since most bet sizes you’ll face will be between a half pot and a full pot, it’s useful to memorize that you will usually get between 3:1 and 2:1 odds, respectively.
After you calculate the pot odds, you can compare them with the chance of winning the hand, or the chance of improving your hand.
In order to call profitably with a flush draw, you would need pot odds of about 4:1.
Since you are only getting 2:1 odds in this example, your call is not outright profitable.
Important note: pot odds only tell you if your call is profitable RIGHT NOW. It doesn’t take the future streets into account.
In other words, pot odds don’t tell you anything about the implied odds.
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Flush Draw Mistake #3: Calling With Insufficient Implied Odds
Implied odds refer to the amount of money you can potentially earn on future streets if your draw completes.
While the pot odds are exact and precise, implied odds require a bit of guesswork.
Implied odds allow you to call a bet with insufficient pot odds, because you can make up for them by potentially winning more money on future streets.
There’s no clear-cut way to calculate your exact implied odds, because they will depend on a number of different and unknown factors.
Here are a few key factors that determine your implied odds:
a) Your opponent type
Implied odds are determined by how likely your opponent is to put additional money into the pot.
So you are usually getting better implied odds against wild and aggressive opponents than timid and passive ones.
The former are more likely to make all sorts of crazy bluffs, which improves your implied odds.
Passive opponents, on the other hand, aren’t as likely to put more money into the pot unless they have a strong hand themselves.
b) Your opponent’s hand strength
The stronger your opponent’s hand, the more likely they are to put additional money into the pot.
This is good news if your own hand improves to a monster hand. But you should be careful if your opponent can potentially end up with an even stronger hand than yours.
If your hand improves to a flush, for example, it won’t do you much good if your opponent ends up with an even stronger flush.
So you should always consider the reverse implied odds if you’re not drawing to the nuts, i.e. the strongest possible combination on a given board.
c) How obvious is your hand strength
One of the problems with completed flush draws is that they are fairly obvious to spot.
The more obvious your hand strength, the worse implied odds you are getting, because your opponents will be less likely to pay you off on scary board runouts.
That’s one of the reasons you should consider fastplaying your flush draws.
This way, you can credibly represent other hands beside the fairly obvious completed flush, which can be seen a mile away.
d) Effective stack sizes
The effective stack size is the smaller stack size of the players involved in the pot, and it shows you the maximum amount of money you can earn.
So the bigger the effective stack size, the better implied odds you are getting.
For this reason, speculative hands like suited Aces and suited connectors prefer deep stack sizes, and the deeper the better.
That’s because making a strong hand like a flush is relatively unlikely, so you want to get your money’s worth if you actually do manage to hit it.
e) Where you are in the hand
Finally, implied odds are better on earlier streets (preflop and on the flop) than later streets (turn and river).
This one is fairly self explanatory. The earlier the stage of the hand, the more upside potential there is, because there more time and opportunities to put money into the pot.
For a deeper dive on how to calculate the implied odds and other advanced poker strategies, check out The Microstakes Playbook.
Flush Draw Mistake #4: Playing Your Nut Flush Draws Passively
Another common amateur poker mistake is playing too passively post flop. This is especially the case with strong drawing hands like the nuts flush draws.
As a general rule, the stronger your drawing hand, the more aggressively you should play it.
The strength of your draw is determined by two factors:
a) the absolute hand strength of your draw and
b) the number of outs you have.
A flush is very strong when it comes to absolute hand strength, and it’s also very strong when considering the number of outs you have.
When you have a suited Ace, you are always drawing to the nuts, i.e. the strongest possible combination on a given board.
The only exception is when a board pairs, and your opponent can theoretically make a full house.
But this is a very rare occurrence. The stronger your hand, the less likely it is for your opponent to have an even stronger hand.
When you are drawing to the nuts flush, your best bet is usually to play it aggressively, i.e. bet and raise.
This way, you are giving yourself more than one way to win the pot.
You can either win the pot outright if your opponent folds, or you can potentially take down an even bigger pot if your draw completes on future streets.
Remember, you don’t need to rely on hitting your outs to win the hand if you make your opponents fold.
Speaking of outs, a nuts flush draw has 9 outs, so the chance of completing a flush draw is 35%.
By the way, you can quickly calculate the percentage chance of your draws completing by using the so-called rule of fours.
Rule of fours: simply multiply the number of outs you have by 4 to get a rough percentage chance of your draw competing from flop to river.
The rule of fours gets slightly less accurate the more outs you have, but it works well in most in-game situations.
If you want to know the chance of your draw completing on the next street (flop to turn or turn to river), you simply multiply the number of outs by 2 instead of 4.
By using the rule of fours with a flush draw (9 x 4 = 36), you can see that it’s quite close to your actual chance of improving, so the rule of fours is quite accurate.
Even though you have a lot of outs with a nut flush draw, you’re still going to miss it almost two out of three times.
That’s why it’s usually a good idea to attempt a semi-bluff instead of solely relying on hitting your outs.
You are semibluffing when you don’t have a strong hand yet, but can potentially improve on future streets.
This is different from stone-cold bluffing, where the only way for you to win the hand is by getting your opponents to fold.
Another reason you should semibluff with flush draws is the fact that completed flush draws are fairly easy to spot.
Even a recreational player can see a third heart coming on the turn, for example, so they may be less willing to give you any action.
If you play your draw aggressively before it completes, on the other hand, it may be more difficult for your opponent to put you on your exact hand.
Completed flushes are less concealed than, say, completed straights, so they usually have weaker implied odds.
The better concealed your hand strength, the better implied odds you are getting.
Flush Draw Example Hand #2
You are dealt A♥8♥ in the BB (big blind).
A tight and aggressive player open-raises to 3x from the CO (cutoff). You call.
Pot: 6.5 BB
Flop: K♥T♥4♠
You: ???
You should check-raise.
In this spot, check-raising is the best play, especially if your opponent is likely to c-bet with a high frequency.
A c-bet (aka a continuation bet) is a bet made by the previous street’s aggressor.
If you check-raise here, you will often be able to win the pot outright on the flop, meaning you don’t need to rely on hitting your outs to win the hand.
If your check-raise gets called, you still have a ton of equity to fall back on, and you can potentially take down an even bigger pot if your draw completes.
Another reason to check-raise is to take away the initiative from your opponent.
If you check-raise and get called, you can continue barreling on future streets, either as a value bet or as a bluff.
Playing aggressively is preferable to playing passively here because you are playing out of position, meaning it’s harder to realize your equity.
Let’s say you check-call on the flop instead and your flush completes on the turn.
Then what?
You can either donk-bet or try to check raise, but there’s no guarantee your opponent will bet the turn again.
A donk bet is a bet made out of position by the player who is not the previous street’s aggressor.
If you donk bet, you’re basically telegraphing that your draw completed, and your opponent may not give you any action, especially if they pay attention to the action sequence and the board runout.
If you attempt to check-raise instead, your opponent may simply check behind and deny you the opportunity to do so.
Either way, you are much better off check raising on the flop instead.
In today’s games, it takes more than waiting around for a premium hand to be a profitable long term winner.
You also need to look for edges in less than ideal circumstances. This means knowing how to play out of position against skilled opponents who won’t just roll over.
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4 Flush Draw Mistakes Fish Always Make - Summary
You don't need to study a lot of advanced poker strategy to play flush draws profitably.
All you need to do is avoid some basic common mistakes a lot of players tend to make.
To sum up, here's the top 4 most common flush draw mistakes made by recreational poker players.
1. Playing suited junk
One of the most common amatuer poker mistakes is playing too many hands. This includes suited junk hands that have very poor playability post flop.
Flopping a flush (or a flush draw) is a rare occurrence in no-limit hold’em, so you shouldn't play just about random suited hand just for the prospect of making a flush post flop.
2. Calling with incorrect pot odds
Another common amatuer poker mistake is chasing just about any draw regardless of the pot odds.
You should only call with a drawing hand if you are getting sufficient odds on a call, otherwise you’ll be bleeding money over the long run.
3. Not considering the implied odds
Pot odds tell you if your call is outright profitable, while the implied odds tell you how much money you can potentially make on future streets if your draw completes.
Some of the most important factors that determine your implied odds are your opponent type, their hand strength, the board runout, and the effective stack sizes.
You should consider each of these factors to determine whether or not you can play your flush draw profitably.
4. Playing the nuts flush draws passively
As a general rule, the stronger your draw, the more aggressively you should play it. So if you have a nuts flush draw, consider playing it fast (i.e. with betting and raising).
This way, you give yourself more than one way to win the pot: you can either win the pot outright by making your opponents fold, or potentially take down an even bigger pot on future streets if you hit your outs.
Remember, you don’t need to rely on hitting your outs if you make everybody fold instead.
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This article was written by Fran Ferlan
Poker player, writer and coach
Specializing in live and online cash games
For coaching enquiries, contact Fran at email@franferlan.com
Or apply directly for poker coaching with Fran, right here
Lastly, if you want to know the complete strategy I use to make $2000+ per month in small/mid stakes games, grab a copy of my free poker cheat sheet.
