Deuce to Seven Triple Draw Strategy

Deuce to Seven Triple Draw, or in short: 2-7 Triple Draw is a very nice game where you can make a lot of money as a good player. Novice players that overvalue their hands are the ones you can exploit. And this is already the biggest mistake you have to avoid at 2-7 Triple Draw. Let’s take a look at it in detail.

In 2-7 Triple Draw you can change three times as many cards as you want. This sounds like you can make very strong hands even if you start with weak hands. If you look at a hand like A-K-2-2-T you have four junk cards that you should discard. But this is way too many even though you can discard three times. But novice players think that this hand isn’t bad and they will get a good hand after three draws. And that’s exactly the mistake they make. On the first draw they discard A-K-2-T and may get 5-9-Q-K back giving them a K-Q-9-5-2 hand. Now they see that only two cards are ruining their hand. They then discard the K and Q and may get A and 7 in return giving them a A-9-7-5-2 hand. Now they see that only one card sucks and they discard their Ace. Now they may get a 3 and hold 9-7-5-3-2. This looks perfect because every draw improved their hand significantly. But most of the time when they call or even raise with this hand they recognize that they lose with this 9 low against a 8 or 7 low.

Overall they spend a lot of money drawing to a losing hand – they biggest mistake you can make in poker.

So what are you supposed to do? What strategy is the right one?

It’s pretty simple: you have to be selective what hands to play. Let’s make a few examples:

A-2-5-7-8 is a very good hand. You can discard the ace hoping for a 3, 4 or 6. You can play this hand.

2-2-5-7-7 is a pretty good hand. Obviously, you have two pair which is pretty much one of the worst low hands you can have. But you already take away two deuces and two sevens – cards that other players need to make strong low hands. You can play this hand very aggressively and discard your deuce and seven. And even if you don’t complete a strong hand it’s possible to bluff your opponents off the hand because you take away a lot of great cards they need for strong hands.

T-9-8-2-3 a pretty bad hand. Of course, you already have a ten low. But you can’t improve easily. What are you doing with this hand if someone shows strenght and it seems that ten low is not enough to win the hand? Right: you can’t do anything but discard T-9-8 and hope for three perfect cards. That’s a very bad spot to be in and you should just fold this hand.