A straight in poker is a five-card hand that contains consecutive cards of different ranks. Straights are a strong poker hand that can give you a big winrate in many games. Despite their strength, they are often overdrawn by stronger hands like flushes or full houses. Hence, they should be played only when there is no other better option available in the hand. In this article, we will learn what is an inside straight in poker and how to play such hands effectively.

An inside straight draw (also known as a gutshot straight or belly buster draw) is a poker hand where you have four of the five cards to a straight, but one card in the middle is missing. Such a hand is not the nuts, but it will still be a strong poker hand. The odds of hitting an inside straight are not as good as those of hitting an open-ended straight, but they are still good enough to warrant a raise in some situations.

The reason that an inside straight draw has less value than an open-ended straight is that it only has four outs to hit, but there are a lot more outs in the deck than that. On the other hand, an open-ended straight has eight outs and is two times more likely to hit than a straight with one of those outs missing.

Nevertheless, an inside straight draw is still a strong poker hand and can get paid off by opponents’ decent hands more often than weaker holdings such as two pair or a three of a kind. Its value will also depend on the rank of the top card in your straight.

In some cases, it might be okay to draw to a straight as a bluff, but chasing straights on a regular basis is not a smart strategy. This is especially true in draw and stud poker variations where your opponent’s bets on future streets could make your straight more likely to miss.

As you can see, the value of a straight depends on its position in the poker hand rankings and the amount of money that is being offered for a made hand of equal strength. For example, a straight beats all made hands that sit below it in the poker hand rankings, but loses to a flush and all high-card hands.

It’s important to understand how the odds of an inside straight draw change as you go down the betting street. For instance, your chances of making an inside straight draw on the turn will be half as good as your chances of hitting it on the river. To determine these odds, you can use a basic math formula: simply divide the number of outs by two to calculate the odds of hitting your inside straight on the turn and by four to determine your odds of hitting it on the river. The numbers are not 100% accurate, but they are a good estimate of the odds you will face in each case.