Haven’t said much about TDL for a while, but I was reminded recently of a discussion I had with Mike, about the seeming horror of being dealt a 1 card draw to the nuts in Triple Draw.

Sounds odd huh?  Where’s the horror in being dealt a TDL monster?

Well, here’s the thing.  When playing TDL tournaments, it’s the 1 card nut draws that end up busting me.  When you are dealt a 1 card nut draw, (henceforth ‘1CND’), you are absolutely committed to that hand to the death.  That means raising, betting, re-raising etc, all the way.  That’s 4, 5, 6 or more big bets, and if you miss your draws, you’re a gonna.  I played the $2500 TDL event in the 2008 WSOP and I busted when dealt 3 successive 1CND’s and missed every one, for somewhere around 16 big bets.
With a 1CND, there is a 17% chance of hitting on the first draw (by ‘hitting’, I mean hitting the nuts, as opposed to an 8 or other lowish hand, which could also win).  So the odds are pretty much against you making your hand.  At the same time, you don’t, in my experience, get very well paid off when you hit the hand early.  Staying pat tends to wreck your action, so you only really seem to get paid off when you hit with the 3rd draw, thus not getting you great returns for your 1CND’s.

Conversely, when you have some kind of 2-card draw, that improves to a 1-card draw, then a low hand at showdown which wins, the tendency is to win a much larger pot.

So the question is, is even playing a 1CND even a +EV play?  Should you fold them?  Of course not, you love those hands, you must play them, they are monsters.

And that’s the seeming paradox.
Mike and I did have some discussions about it, I’ll post some of our emails later.

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