The basic premise of draw poker is the following. First you are dealt five cards and there is a round of betting. Then you’ll discard some cards that you don’t want and receive new cards from the deck. After the draw, there is another round of betting. Some games only have one round of drawing while other games have three, but after each draw there is a betting round unless all of the remaining players are all-in. With this basic structure, there are still three distinct versions of online draw poker played, and here we’re going to take a look at them.
The most commonly known poker game in America before the year 2000 was probably five card draw, and this game is still alive and well on the Internet. This game has one drawing round and uses the traditional high poker hand rankings where two pair beats one pair, a flush beats a straight, etc. While you’ll typically find this game played with antes in live poker, the main difference is that online it’s usually played with only blinds and a rotating button like in hold’em. This allows players who are familiar with hold’em variations to transition to draw more easily, and has probably worked in favor of bringing more players to the game. Five card draw is typically played fixed-limit or pot-limit, but can sometimes be found with a no-limit betting structure instead.
Another type of online draw poker that’s played a lot is a lowball game called no-limit 2-7 single draw, also known as Kansas City Lowball. This game uses one draw and no-limit betting with two blinds (and sometimes antes), and usually plays at tables with six or seven players depending on which online poker site you play on. The 2-7 style of lowball means that the worst traditional hand of poker wins in this game, so the best hand you can have in 2-7 lowball is 75432 without a flush.
The other most common type of online draw poker is a different lowball game called fixed-limit A-5 triple draw. This game plays at six-handed tables and has three rounds of draws, which means four rounds of betting. The A-5 style of lowball poker doesn’t depend on the normal poker hand rankings at all, but looks at the lowest 5 cards that a player holds, considering an Ace as a low. The best hand you can have is A2345, even if they’re all of the same suit since straights and flushes don’t count against you in A-5 lowball.
