The Straight Life

I have been giving some serious thought about the frequency of hitting straights vs. flushes, and about the nature of straights in general.  If you give some serious thought to it, straights are much easier to hit than flushes.  The odds are:

Odds Against Flopping:

A flush.............118 to 1
A straight when holding any two connecting cards 5/4 through j/10............76 to 1
Three of a kind when holding a pocket pair..............7.5 to 1
Any pair (matching one of your hole cards)............2.45 to 1

So, hitting your set is 3 times less likely than hitting a pair, flopping a set is 10 times less likely than hitting a set (on the flop), and flopping your flush is 1.5 times less likely than flopping a straight.  Of course, you still have a couple of cards to come, so missing is not the end of the world.

But here is the catch in all of this.  In my experience you make far more money usually when you hit your straights than almost any other hand (except for sets), and they have the advantage of being much more common.  Chasing a pocket pair after the flop is usually a losing proposition while straights are much easier (open ender is 8 outs vs. 2 outs for set).  Even a gutshot offers 4 outs.

The other advantage of the straight is the disguise factor.  A flush is just darned obvious, and unless you have the nuts you can lose money even when you hit your hand.  On the other hand, the straight is sometimes beaten by the bigger straight, but on most boards you will play cautiously...if you are astute.....when that is possible.  The clueless that you sometimes run into will re-jam your nut straight with the "dumb end" at times and will always, always pay you off.

Playing some online poker today I tried to write down which hands would make the straight if one was possible.  It truly amazed me how many there were.  Furthermore, it illustrated how important the connectedness was (versus gapped connectors).

Out of 21 hands observed:

17 no gappers would have won
7  one gappers would win
6 two gappers would win

The reason this adds up to more than 21 is that on some hands more than one would make a straight.  For instance, one observed hand 4 different combinations would make a straight:

J/Q, 4/5, J/9, and 6/9, with JQ, the ungapped connector obviously the winner.

Two gappers sometimes beat one gappers, and "no gap" connectors sometimes were beaten by larger no gappers.  I realize that this is, statistically speaking, a totally useless study due to the small sample, but two observations are pertinent.  One, there are a hell of a lot of straight possibilities being dealt.  Second, no gap connectors are vastly superior to those with gaps.  In my opinion, anything more than  two gaps is just gambling unless they are face cards.....which is a different story for a different time.

Oh, and the best of the best?  4/5 with 5 winners (although beaten by bigger straights 3 times) K/Q- 4 winners, followed by Q/J, and J/10 with 2.  This also illustrates the point of playing larger connectors, as they can make big pairs....which sometimes keeps you in the hand until the straight develops.  They are not dominated, as the lowly 4/5 was so often, sometimes by gapped connectors.  Most books I have read do not recommend even playing any connector below 5/6 or 6/7.