16 players sat down last night for the rousing fixed limit mixed game poker extravaganza known as H.O.R.S.E.
Although we had less players than we've had more recently (NLHE is by far the most popular tournament, sorry to everyone who wants more variety, but with this kind of attendance I've only got one or two of these a year in me at most) the din of the room was much louder than usual - as every one tried their best to sort through the complicated antes, bring-ins and constraints of fixed limit stud games.
Truthfully, this was the easiest mixed game tournament I've ever hosted, thanks mostly to everyone's enthusiasm and good natured willingness to figure out and work through the machinations of the various games. Still, my own poor play and early exit (plus a fair amount of unpleasant tilt, for which I am truly sorry) I have to attribute in at least small part to the mental gymnastics required to run a tournament as complex as the venerable poker event named after an equine.
The first out was a new player to Pepper Street, the lovely Mrs. Cindy Lou, the wife of regular Allen Q. Cindy was in it to win it and she played with gusto, accumulating a large stack quickly, then just as quickly lost it as the typically nasty game of Omaha/8 saw her drawing to the second best hand on both ends of the pot in two monster pots. She took her loss gracefully, and we very much look forward to having her back.
If I may toot my own horn, the structure was absolutely PERFECT - eliminating players at a healthy pace, while still giving folks plenty of room to splash and maneuver. Especially appreciated was the new blind timer video, crafted by yours truly at work (off the clock of course). It took a lot of work out of the equation for me, plus it provided a calming "Hal-like" voice for everyone to enjoy. (Okay, maybe not enjoy, but at least it helped everyone keep track of what we were playing).
By 11pm it was bubble time, though most players chips were dwarfed by the mountainous stack of Dog (a solid player and great guy with a very cool name). Dan I. for the second time this year was the lucky recipient of a fantastic bubble prize - a spectacular DVD of one of my favorite movies - "Dirty Harry"!
Our first to cash, and fourth place finisher, was Pepper Street local - Mike K. Once again, his solid grasp of poker carried him into the money, a tidy sum of $57.
Speaking of money, it should be mentioned that our prize pool was a healthy $480, one of the largest ever - simply by virtue of a $30 entry. (Another reason for the tournament running so smoothly I confess, was the lack of rebuys and add-ons.) I think, we might be looking at the future, as most people seemed very happy with the price and got plenty of poker for their money. I'm a little shy about implementing it in a no limit tournament, but we'll see after I ponder the possibility for awhile.
Next to fall was third place finisher Dan G., who made his short stack last a loooong time, so long in fact that he got to take home $85.
As soon as it was down to heads-up, approaching midnight, Gabor V. whose savvy play had slowly built his chips up to almost approach the same ballpark as Dog's still formidable stack, proposed an even chop. Dog graciously accepted on the condition that he retain the title and trophy, Gabor agreed and they split $345.
Although there was a chop, unlike last month where the levels were too slow, this month I think the structure was absolutely fine - and had the players continued the tournament would have ended within 30 minutes or so.
Next month - Omaha Eight or Better! Saturday, July 11 at 7pm.
You may have noticed that the date has changed, I moved it earlier for a number of reasons, but primarily because the second half of July has filled up crazy fast with weekend family activities. I expect it may be the same for a number of players on the 11th, but I really hope you can all make the effort - Omaha/8 is maddeningly fun, and don't forget that Player of the Year points are doubled! Both Gabor V. and Dog nearly doubled their entire points for the year just from this last tournament. Dog is now in 6th place over all, and Gabor is in the top five!
If you think the bracelet is out of reach, think again!
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
H.O.R.S.E. games review.
You know them, you love them, but just in case you've forgotten - here they are and here's how to play them.
Limit Hold-Em
While it's younger and sexier sister No Limit may be the one that we all have fun with, Fixed Limit is the smart and sensible girl that we bring home to mother.
The games are virtually the same and yet VERY different.
If you know how to play No Limit Hold-Em, then you know how to play Limit Hold-Em. But do you know how to play it well?
Remember, in Limit Hold-em your bets are "fixed" (meaning you can only bet one amount).
The only amount you are allowed to bet is the big blind pre-flop & flop and twice that amount for the turn and river.
There is also a maximum of 3 raises (four bets total) for each betting round.
Same game, but quite a different flavor. And the strategies for mastering these two forms of Hold-Em could not be more apart.
In NLHE, the big pocket pairs are what you're looking for. In limit, they're still good - but not great. Suited connecters and other drawing hands are where it's at, as you often have a great price to see another card.
In NLHE a flopped set is a monster - in LHE it can be BIG trouble unless the board then pairs favorably (which only happens about 35% of the time, and less than that in your favor).
It's very likely, especially when blinds are low in a tournament (or you're playing in a low stakes cash game) that you'll have at least one nimrod who HAS to chase that gutshot straight and ends up backing into a flush or makes his hand in some other ridiculous way.
Part of the reason for this phenomenon is that you may notice, if you pay attention to pot odds, that in Limit Hold-em you are frequently "priced in" to see another card.
But Limit Hold-em is a game of very small edges (whereas NLHE is a game of big swings and decisions) - and it can be correct (especially in a tournament) to fold if you know you are beat or drawing super slim, even if you have pot odds that are seemingly crazy big.
In tournament LHE the first few levels are always kind of silly, even in the WSOP - it's very difficult to bust someone or get busted.
Then the bet amounts go up, and all of a sudden you find yourself unable to draw to the river without calling off your entire stack. It's a very different animal from NLHE that's for sure.
I was raised on it, so I love it -and see it as a different skill set to master.
Omaha 8 or Better
Pot Limit Omaha High Only is the second most popular poker game in the world these days, and the most popular game in Europe.
In America it has only recently eclipsed the Eight or Better version, which is still the Omaha variant of choice for H.O.R.S.E.
While PLO is a fun action game, I don't find it nearly as interesting as O8.
Both Omaha variants include the following:
The betting, flop, turn and river are just like Hold-Em, but you get dealt four hole cards instead of two.
And in Omaha you MUST use 2 cards from your hand and 3 cards on the board ONLY to make your final poker hand. There is no other option. Period. This is what messes people up much of the time. Even experienced poker players are prone to forget this in the heat of a hand.
Omaha/8 is played the same but with a wrinkle - it is a high-low game. Meaning you can win half or all of the pot with the high hand and up to half the pot with the low hand.
A long and detailed description of what constitutes a low hand can be found here.
In H.O.R.S.E. a low hand is always qualified by the Ace to 5 criteria, with flushes and straights NOT COUNTING against the low.
In Omaha/8 and also in Stud 8 or better, for a poker hand to qualify as a low hand - it must contain five unpaired cards, all of 8 or lower rank.
If the board only has two hands of a rank 8 or lower, there can be no low hand at showdown. The high hand will scoop the pot.
There is a long standing home game school of thought that Omaha/8 is much more complicated and involved than Hold-Em. I respectfully disagree.
In my experience, strategy in Omaha/8 is much less involved than either variant of Hold-Em. To me, decisions are much easier to make - and the key is starting cards. Looking for four cards that work well together and have the potential to be drawing to both ends of the pot is the best place to start.
After this, an 8 handed Omaha/8 game, especially in the first half of a tournament, is much more likely to go to showdown than a Hold-Em games. Hence, it becomes a card centric quest of calculating outs - and hopefully drawing to both ends of the pot and aiming for the nuts.
In general at a full table where lots of players see the flop-
If the board pairs - someone has a full house.
If the board has 3 of one suit - someone has a flush, and likely the nut flush.
To me, this makes O8 easier to play. This is not to say that the game is not brutally sadistic. In many ways, it is, even more so than NLHE. Starting cards can look so beautiful and seductive, and it can be agony (or very difficult, even impossible) to release them when the flop blanks.
It is also more fun for the math side of the brain, with twice as many hole cards, there are 6 times as many starting card combinations - a lot of card substance to chew on.
But in an Omaha/8 tournament unlike NLHE, if you don't catch cards, you're not likely to win.
Even so, the second half of an O8 tournament (and believe it or not, I've played in a few) more closely resembles NLHE, where pre-flop aggression becomes a bigger factor and continuation betting often results in the absence of a showdown.
A variant of O8 that has been growing online is played Pot Limit.
All of H.O.R.S.E. is fixed limit only - thank goodness, as calculating pot sizes and multiple side pots without a dedicated dealer can be quite a headache.
Razz
Is Stud lowball.
Click here to learn about how a low hand is determined using the Ace to 5 method.
Razz is the red-headed bastard step-child of poker, and exists today in the modern card room only as part of a mixed cash game format (typically H.O.R.S.E.) or as a single tournament found only once a year at the World Series of Poker.
I like to call it "This God forsaken game."
As with Omaha/8, it is card centric, and decisions are not the most difficult. Oh but can it be brutal.
Brutal.
When you are dealt A-2 in the hole and 4 -6 are showing, and you catch paint after paint and then pair your ace on the river.
Deeelightful.
As with other Seven Stud variants, the key to Razz is to observe what other cards are dead to you. In Stud High, you fold if you see a lot of the cards you have in other players hands. In Razz, seeing this is a good thing - you don't want to pair up.
In Razz, if you have two low cards, but then see a bunch of DIFFERENT low cards in other players hands - you may be drawing very slim.
As with all forms of fixed limit poker, especially in tournament format, there may come a time when you have to get away from a hand that you are drawing too - even though the pot may be screaming a very cheap price. What's great about Stud is that you can see a good percentage of what cards are "alive" and which cards are "dead", making the decision to chase or to give up a bit easier.
Seven Stud High Only
I don't think I'm giving away too much to say that this is my weakest H.O.R.S.E. game.
More than any other poker variant - Seven Stud requires monk-like patience to wait for a "live" set of good starting cards.
For example, if you have AK in the hole, and you see nothing but aces and kings face up in other players hands - then you have what is referred to as - dead cards. Most of what you need, is plainly unavailable, and likely an easy fold.
This also applies not only to pairing up, making two pairs and boats, but also to drawing to straights and flushes.
In Hold-em, we know if we need to catch one card for a flush we MAY have 9 outs. I say "may" because we never know exactly what other players are holding. In stud, you get to view a big percentage of cards that are already unavailable, making decisions to chase or not that much more clear.
Eight or Better Seven Stud
I want to love this game, I really do. It seems pretty interesting, combining all that is good and interesting about Seven Stud and Razz together.
Alas, even the major wrinkle is not enough to make this game action packed. It, like Razz and Stud High, is a game of patience and observation.
The wrinkle is that Stud/8 is a high-low game, but the low hand must qualify by having five unpaired cards, all with a rank of 8 or lower.
Again, straights and flushes do not count against this low qualifier.
One thing to keep in mind is that a qualifying low hand will be made with seven randomly dealt cards less than 40% of the time. With this knowledge, you want to be sure that you are not drawing only to the low end of the pot, where you are likely to get quartered anyway.
In either Stud/8 or O8, you should always be looking to scoop, as winning half the pot doesn't put you much higher than where you were before you started the hand. And if you only get a quarter of the pot - unless by some miracle the majority of players at the table have stayed in until the river, you've certainly lost money.
I'm very much looking forward to this mixed game tourney. I would certainly do this more than once a year if they weren't so difficult to run, and if they were more popular. As of this point in time, where a NLHE tournament would have 16+ players for sure, our H.O.R.S.E. event in just over 2 weeks has only 11 people signed up. Ah well, it'll still be fun.
Limit Hold-Em
While it's younger and sexier sister No Limit may be the one that we all have fun with, Fixed Limit is the smart and sensible girl that we bring home to mother.
The games are virtually the same and yet VERY different.
If you know how to play No Limit Hold-Em, then you know how to play Limit Hold-Em. But do you know how to play it well?
Remember, in Limit Hold-em your bets are "fixed" (meaning you can only bet one amount).
The only amount you are allowed to bet is the big blind pre-flop & flop and twice that amount for the turn and river.
There is also a maximum of 3 raises (four bets total) for each betting round.
Same game, but quite a different flavor. And the strategies for mastering these two forms of Hold-Em could not be more apart.
In NLHE, the big pocket pairs are what you're looking for. In limit, they're still good - but not great. Suited connecters and other drawing hands are where it's at, as you often have a great price to see another card.
In NLHE a flopped set is a monster - in LHE it can be BIG trouble unless the board then pairs favorably (which only happens about 35% of the time, and less than that in your favor).
It's very likely, especially when blinds are low in a tournament (or you're playing in a low stakes cash game) that you'll have at least one nimrod who HAS to chase that gutshot straight and ends up backing into a flush or makes his hand in some other ridiculous way.
Part of the reason for this phenomenon is that you may notice, if you pay attention to pot odds, that in Limit Hold-em you are frequently "priced in" to see another card.
But Limit Hold-em is a game of very small edges (whereas NLHE is a game of big swings and decisions) - and it can be correct (especially in a tournament) to fold if you know you are beat or drawing super slim, even if you have pot odds that are seemingly crazy big.
In tournament LHE the first few levels are always kind of silly, even in the WSOP - it's very difficult to bust someone or get busted.
Then the bet amounts go up, and all of a sudden you find yourself unable to draw to the river without calling off your entire stack. It's a very different animal from NLHE that's for sure.
I was raised on it, so I love it -and see it as a different skill set to master.
Omaha 8 or Better
Pot Limit Omaha High Only is the second most popular poker game in the world these days, and the most popular game in Europe.
In America it has only recently eclipsed the Eight or Better version, which is still the Omaha variant of choice for H.O.R.S.E.
While PLO is a fun action game, I don't find it nearly as interesting as O8.
Both Omaha variants include the following:
The betting, flop, turn and river are just like Hold-Em, but you get dealt four hole cards instead of two.
And in Omaha you MUST use 2 cards from your hand and 3 cards on the board ONLY to make your final poker hand. There is no other option. Period. This is what messes people up much of the time. Even experienced poker players are prone to forget this in the heat of a hand.
Omaha/8 is played the same but with a wrinkle - it is a high-low game. Meaning you can win half or all of the pot with the high hand and up to half the pot with the low hand.
A long and detailed description of what constitutes a low hand can be found here.
In H.O.R.S.E. a low hand is always qualified by the Ace to 5 criteria, with flushes and straights NOT COUNTING against the low.
In Omaha/8 and also in Stud 8 or better, for a poker hand to qualify as a low hand - it must contain five unpaired cards, all of 8 or lower rank.
If the board only has two hands of a rank 8 or lower, there can be no low hand at showdown. The high hand will scoop the pot.
There is a long standing home game school of thought that Omaha/8 is much more complicated and involved than Hold-Em. I respectfully disagree.
In my experience, strategy in Omaha/8 is much less involved than either variant of Hold-Em. To me, decisions are much easier to make - and the key is starting cards. Looking for four cards that work well together and have the potential to be drawing to both ends of the pot is the best place to start.
After this, an 8 handed Omaha/8 game, especially in the first half of a tournament, is much more likely to go to showdown than a Hold-Em games. Hence, it becomes a card centric quest of calculating outs - and hopefully drawing to both ends of the pot and aiming for the nuts.
In general at a full table where lots of players see the flop-
If the board pairs - someone has a full house.
If the board has 3 of one suit - someone has a flush, and likely the nut flush.
To me, this makes O8 easier to play. This is not to say that the game is not brutally sadistic. In many ways, it is, even more so than NLHE. Starting cards can look so beautiful and seductive, and it can be agony (or very difficult, even impossible) to release them when the flop blanks.
It is also more fun for the math side of the brain, with twice as many hole cards, there are 6 times as many starting card combinations - a lot of card substance to chew on.
But in an Omaha/8 tournament unlike NLHE, if you don't catch cards, you're not likely to win.
Even so, the second half of an O8 tournament (and believe it or not, I've played in a few) more closely resembles NLHE, where pre-flop aggression becomes a bigger factor and continuation betting often results in the absence of a showdown.
A variant of O8 that has been growing online is played Pot Limit.
All of H.O.R.S.E. is fixed limit only - thank goodness, as calculating pot sizes and multiple side pots without a dedicated dealer can be quite a headache.
Razz
Is Stud lowball.
Click here to learn about how a low hand is determined using the Ace to 5 method.
Razz is the red-headed bastard step-child of poker, and exists today in the modern card room only as part of a mixed cash game format (typically H.O.R.S.E.) or as a single tournament found only once a year at the World Series of Poker.
I like to call it "This God forsaken game."
As with Omaha/8, it is card centric, and decisions are not the most difficult. Oh but can it be brutal.
Brutal.
When you are dealt A-2 in the hole and 4 -6 are showing, and you catch paint after paint and then pair your ace on the river.
Deeelightful.
As with other Seven Stud variants, the key to Razz is to observe what other cards are dead to you. In Stud High, you fold if you see a lot of the cards you have in other players hands. In Razz, seeing this is a good thing - you don't want to pair up.
In Razz, if you have two low cards, but then see a bunch of DIFFERENT low cards in other players hands - you may be drawing very slim.
As with all forms of fixed limit poker, especially in tournament format, there may come a time when you have to get away from a hand that you are drawing too - even though the pot may be screaming a very cheap price. What's great about Stud is that you can see a good percentage of what cards are "alive" and which cards are "dead", making the decision to chase or to give up a bit easier.
Seven Stud High Only
I don't think I'm giving away too much to say that this is my weakest H.O.R.S.E. game.
More than any other poker variant - Seven Stud requires monk-like patience to wait for a "live" set of good starting cards.
For example, if you have AK in the hole, and you see nothing but aces and kings face up in other players hands - then you have what is referred to as - dead cards. Most of what you need, is plainly unavailable, and likely an easy fold.
This also applies not only to pairing up, making two pairs and boats, but also to drawing to straights and flushes.
In Hold-em, we know if we need to catch one card for a flush we MAY have 9 outs. I say "may" because we never know exactly what other players are holding. In stud, you get to view a big percentage of cards that are already unavailable, making decisions to chase or not that much more clear.
Eight or Better Seven Stud
I want to love this game, I really do. It seems pretty interesting, combining all that is good and interesting about Seven Stud and Razz together.
Alas, even the major wrinkle is not enough to make this game action packed. It, like Razz and Stud High, is a game of patience and observation.
The wrinkle is that Stud/8 is a high-low game, but the low hand must qualify by having five unpaired cards, all with a rank of 8 or lower.
Again, straights and flushes do not count against this low qualifier.
One thing to keep in mind is that a qualifying low hand will be made with seven randomly dealt cards less than 40% of the time. With this knowledge, you want to be sure that you are not drawing only to the low end of the pot, where you are likely to get quartered anyway.
In either Stud/8 or O8, you should always be looking to scoop, as winning half the pot doesn't put you much higher than where you were before you started the hand. And if you only get a quarter of the pot - unless by some miracle the majority of players at the table have stayed in until the river, you've certainly lost money.
I'm very much looking forward to this mixed game tourney. I would certainly do this more than once a year if they weren't so difficult to run, and if they were more popular. As of this point in time, where a NLHE tournament would have 16+ players for sure, our H.O.R.S.E. event in just over 2 weeks has only 11 people signed up. Ah well, it'll still be fun.
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