The costs of playing expensive draws.

Using poker calculators to help you with drawing odds, won't necessarily stop you from making bad decisions in getting involved in the hands in the first place.

Although playing draws in Texas hold'em can be a very profitable and key strategy to your game. It's just as important to recognize when not to play them in costly situations. Some common drawing mistakes are drawn to the second-best hand, when there is some obvious and aggressive action around you. Drawing to just over cards on the board when you think nobody has anything. And making week draws like for example the low end of the straight or drawing for a straight when it could be a flush or full house on board as well.

We'll see in a few hands in this video where playing out of position with potential connectors can be costly, because you can often face really raises making to draw more expensive and risky. You might also find yourself where somebody has been out like in the video description, and neither of you have anything. In a situation like that it's just basically a guessing game as to who might be hitting an over card. When I'm in spots like this, I tend to give up on those small pots and simply do not even bother with them. In other words, if my opponent has the balls to bed out that he can take a small pot. I will wait for a better spot with a more lucrative pot.

These are just some of the examples where draws can become expensive. In the low limit games, whether cash or tournaments you will often find a lot of players risking their entire stack in such risky situations. This is often the cause of those memorable and painful bad beats. Keep in mind though, that if you are on the tough side of one of these hands, that you got it in with the best and your opponent made a huge and costly error even though he sucked out. Long-term, that is a money-losing play for him, and a profitable play for you.

You can use a poker calculator such holdem indicator to help you understand better starting positions and pot odds strategies that can help you with such critical decisions, however, it IS always you who decides what hands to play and from where.