Let’s talk pokerstrategy again. I know, I know, you hear it all the time, so many different strategy articles and they all say so many different things. Well, honestly that can only be a good thing. What that means to you is you have many different options to pick and choose from to build your own optimal style.

To help you cope with the information overload, one can take the great humanist Margot Bennett’s words of wisdom to heart: “As times passes, we all get better at blazing a trail through the thicket of advice.”

So, now that my disclaimer is out of the way, let’s get to the poker strategy of the day: the power of “drawing” handsnamely, how to figure it out.

You’re odds of being dealt a pocket pair of high cards is about 1 in 100. What this means is that there will be a lot of times you’ll be drawing to try to hit the winning hand. Three things to really consider in determining if a hand is worth investing in when drawing.

Is the poker hand strong? Many people have a lot of different thresholds on what they’ll consider a strong hand. Let’s say for a minute that we’re excluding pairs. What kinds of hands would be most conducive to investing in to get a good return in your money.

How about suited connectors that are relatively high. I like to shoot for anything in between J-10 to A-K as being considered strong, but in reality that’s relative to the table. But for simplicity’s sake, we’ll say the table is tame. At such a table, it would be smart to invest in these hands as the chances are higher that you can make something with them that will win. Second, you need to consider position. If you’re in late position with one of the hands I’ve just mentioned, and you don’t have a lot of action ahead of you, you can take this opportunity to begin building a pot.

Finally, pay attention to the outs post flop. These are your most important allies after you see the first three cards. From that point, you’ll be able to truly gauge your chances of finishing with a winner, and based on your opponents betting, you’ll also have a good idea of the strength of his hand. In turn, you’ll know whether or not you want to bet the bluff on the end. Really, it’s mostly about thinking, this stuff isn’t as arcane as we can make it sometimes.