Belly Buster (Poker Hand)

A 'belly buster' or 'gut shot', is an inside straight draw in poker. This means it's one of the inner cards that's needed to make the straight. If you were to hold 10 (D) -J (H) and the flop came Q (C) - K (C) - 6 (S), you would have an open ended straight draw. That's to say any K or 9 would make you your hand. Assuming that no 9's were out that you knew about, that would leave 8 outs or cards that could come to make you your winning hand, or a 17.02% of making your hand.

Let's assume the board comes A (C) - K (C) - 6 (S). This time you need to hit any one of the 4 remaining Queens. Your odds of making this are approximately 10-1, in essence you will hit roughly every 9% of the time. This second scenario is an inside straight draw and what is known as a belly buster.

It is important to appreciate that every 10 times you play this hand, you would only win one hand, so the odds are stacked up against you. To put this into practice, let's continue the second example from the flop, so you hold 8-10 (as pictured above) and you are chasing the 9 for your straight. There is $100 in the pot and your opponent raises $20. The pot odds here are 5:1. As you know you have 4 outs, the 4 remaining 9's. You'll make this about every 9% of the time - in other words - you'll lose 9 times out of 10. It's usually not a great hand to chase unless the there's a substantial pot worth chasing and you're getting good odds to make the call.

It is possible also to make a double belly buster draw. For instance you hold 10-J and the flop hits 8-K-Q. Now you have 8 outs (assuming no flush). You have four Aces to make an ace high straight and four 9's that would make your king high straight.

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