A straight in No Limit Hold’em is a very powerful hand beating out anything that is three of a kind or lower. A straight is simply making a 5 card hand that are all in a row for example 2 3 4 5 6 would be a 6 high straight while A K Q J T would be an Ace high straight. In poker the Ace can count as both a high card and low card so an A-5 straight is also possible. This makes the ace more powerful that most cards when it comes to making straights as it will still be possible to make a straight whether the cards come low or high. One key factor for the chances of you making a straight are the cards you are holding.
The closer together your cards are in value the more likely you are to find yourself making a straight, or at least having a straight draw. If you take two connecting cards such as 56 you will have made a straight by the river about one in every 12 times which isn’t too bad given how powerful a straight is! As you increase to a 1 gapped hand (eg 97) the odds become 1 in 13, then 1 in 16 for a 2 gapped hand, and finally about 1 in 20 for a 3 gapped hand. Its the fact that you are nearly twice as likely to make a straight when you have two connecting cards is the main reason people enjoy playing them so much. Again just like with the other hands in poker the highest straight of two straights will be the winning hand.
This would mean that JT would beat T6 on a 7 8 9 flop as the JT would have a Jack high straight while the T6 would only have a Ten high straight. People will often say that poker is a game of odds and percentages and this would be where that starts to come into effect. There are two types of straight draws you can have, open ended straight draws and inside straight draws. An open ended straight draw is when you have 4 cards to the straight already and either the card above or below these 4 cards would complete the straight. So if you have 67 on a 4 5 K flop then you would have an open ended straight draw as you now have a 3 or 8 to make the straight. You will typically complete this straight about 1/3rd of the time so the advice would be not to pay too much before hitting as you are not getting the correct odds!
The second type of straight draw is the inside straight draw, and this essentially means you are only drawing to one card to complete the straight. An example of this would be if you have 67 again but this time the flop is 3 4 K. Now you only have the 5 to complete the straight and with half the amount of cards to get you there you have half the odds and will get there about 1 in 6 times. Overall hitting straights isn’t easy but they do occur often enough that you should see yourself making a few every time you decide to sit down and play some Online Poker!
