What this five-card draw odds calculator does
Draw poker has one decision that matters more than all the others: what to keep. This calculator answers the question behind it. Type the cards each player holds after the discard, and it deals the draw from the remaining deck, scores every result, and tells you how often each hand wins. A pat full house against a four-flush is 43 possible draws; two players each drawing one card is 43 times 42; even two players drawing two cards each is under a million combinations, so almost every realistic spot is enumerated exactly rather than estimated.
It is the same engine and the same ranking as the Hold'em calculator, with no board. Five-card hands, standard high ranking, aces high or low in a straight.
Entering hands and draws
Type only the cards a player keeps. AsAdAhKsKc is a pat full house. 2c3c4c5c is four clubs drawing one. AcAdAh is three aces drawing two. KsKd is a pair drawing three. Spaces separate players, up to eight of them, and any mix of pat hands and draws is fine. If you know what someone discarded, put those cards in Dead cards so they are not dealt back out; otherwise leave it empty, because the cards in the muck are unknown and unknown cards are, for the purposes of the odds, still in the deck.
Worked examples, computed by this engine
| Match-up | Equity | Method | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pat full house vs four-flushAsAdAhKsKc vs 2c3c4c5c | 95.35% / 4.65% | Exact · 43 deals | Load → |
| Two pair vs open-ended straight drawKsKd7h7c2d vs 9s8d7s6c | 81.40% / 18.60% | Exact · 43 deals | Load → |
| Pat straight vs trips drawing two9s8d7c6h5c vs AcAdAh | 89.43% / 10.57% | Exact · 946 deals | Load → |
| Two pair vs inside straight drawQsQd7h7c2d vs 9s8d7s5c | 90.70% / 9.30% | Exact · 43 deals | Load → |
The pat full house against a four-flush is the textbook spot: the flush gets there nine times in 43 and still loses a fraction of those when it was never the nuts, so the boat is a 95% favourite. Two pair against an open-ended straight draw is 81-19, eight outs from 43. The two-card draw is the interesting one: three aces drawing two against a pat straight is only a 10.6% shot, because improving to a full house or quads takes two specific kinds of card and the straight is already made. Players overrate the trips draw constantly, and the exact number is the cure.
Reading the result
Equity is the share of the pot you expect, Win and Tie break it down, and the counts under each percentage are the actual number of draws out of the total. The Hand distribution button shows what each player ends with: how often the four-flush becomes a flush, how often the trips fill up, how often the pair drawing three makes two pair, trips or nothing. For a drawing decision, that table is often more useful than the equity itself, because it tells you what you are hoping for and how often you get it.
About multiple draws
This is a one-draw calculator, which makes it exact for the final draw of any draw game and for all of five-card draw and single-draw lowball. With two or three draws remaining, the equity depends on what each player keeps after each draw, which depends on what they catch, which depends on strategy. No calculator can give that number without a model of both players' decisions, and tools that claim to are guessing. The one-draw number is the right baseline, and in practice the last draw is where most of the money goes in. For the lowball variants of the game there are separate calculators with their own rankings: 2-7 Lowball, A-5 Lowball and Badugi.
Frequently asked questions
Type only the cards the player keeps. 2c3c4c5c is a four-flush drawing one; AcAdAh is trips drawing two. The calculator draws the missing cards from the remaining deck, which is exactly what happens at the table.
Almost always. A one-card draw against a pat hand has 43 outcomes, two one-card draws have 43 times 42, and even two players drawing two is under a million combinations, all of which are evaluated. Three players drawing three cards each is the point where it switches to Monte Carlo and shows a margin of error.
9 of the 47 unseen cards, 19.1%, if nothing else is known. Against a pat full house the flush still loses every time it misses and wins every time it hits except when the board pairs, which is why that match-up comes out near 95% for the full house.
For the last draw, yes, since the final draw in any draw game is the same calculation. With two or three draws to come the equity depends on what each player would discard after each draw, which no calculator can know without a strategy model, so this tool deliberately gives you the one-draw number and leaves the earlier streets to judgement.
