Re: Bored now. Invent a novel poker variant.
 

Super power poker.

It may not quite be what you are looking for, but it is an extremely novel variant of holdem. It only works heads up.

Played exactly as normal holdem, except one player has to play with their cards face up. to make up for this, the person with the face up cards gets to know which cards are coming on the flop, river and turn before the hand begins.

I have played quite afew hours of this to settle an argument over whether having a perfect read, or knowing the coming cards was better HU. turns out they are surprisingly evenly balanced, making for a fun game.

Re: Bhowani Junction
 

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At the 2+2 homegame in DC we played Second Best Hold'em. Exactly same rules as LHE but the SECOND best hand wins the pot.

It's completely insane. Anyone heard of that before? Is it strategyless?


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Mark and I have talked about it a fair bit, along with a variant where the most medium hand wins the pot, which is even weirder. There's a great deal of strategy in manipulating one and only one better hand than yours to stay in the pot while also making the pot bigger. Doing it as a board or draw game should be better than a community game.

Re: Bhowani Junction
 

[ QUOTE ]
At the 2+2 homegame in DC we played Second Best Hold'em. Exactly same rules as LHE but the SECOND best hand wins the pot.

It's completely insane. Anyone heard of that before? Is it strategyless?

--GA

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It's a good game with a good bit of strategy. If your best hand has a pretty good low and you can get it heads up, you have a lock. If a third player catches you making a move for heads up and is in the middle, he has a play to stay in, unless of course the best player drops.

Usually played NL.

Re: Bhowani Junction
 

IMO myself and a couple other 2+2ers invented second best holdem and we have posted about it in a few trip reports. Some additional things we decided were necessary are a portion of the pot for the best hand (we chose 5 BB but it was sort of dependent on the donkishness of the game/stakes to be fair) as well as scoop potential for the best hand which we chose as a full house or better. This allows for some pot size manipulation strategies as well as scooooop potential which is always fun.

-DeathDonkey

Re: Bhowani Junction
 

51 Card Solitaire

You win when you kill yourself.

Re: Bhowani Junction
 

[ QUOTE ]
IMO myself and a couple other 2+2ers invented second best holdem and we have posted about it in a few trip reports. Some additional things we decided were necessary are a portion of the pot for the best hand (we chose 5 BB but it was sort of dependent on the donkishness of the game/stakes to be fair) as well as scoop potential for the best hand which we chose as a full house or better. This allows for some pot size manipulation strategies as well as scooooop potential which is always fun.

-DeathDonkey

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You may very well have invented it, but I'm not sure that y'all were the first to invent it. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] I was playing it ~1990 in Texas. I think it's been around since the draw days.

BTW, long-time 2+2 poster Blank Frank has a some second-best variations listed on his excellent web site:

Five Stud Place
Second Hand High
Place and Show
Vice President

This is a great site on which to spend a few minutes browsing.

Re: Bored now. Invent a novel poker variant.
 

[ QUOTE ]
Super power poker.

It may not quite be what you are looking for, but it is an extremely novel variant of holdem. It only works heads up.

Played exactly as normal holdem, except one player has to play with their cards face up. to make up for this, the person with the face up cards gets to know which cards are coming on the flop, river and turn before the hand begins.

I have played quite afew hours of this to settle an argument over whether having a perfect read, or knowing the coming cards was better HU. turns out they are surprisingly evenly balanced, making for a fun game.

[/ QUOTE ]

Interesting. The same general idea could be applied to a Stud or Draw game, leading to these three variations (which work multiway):

California Clairvoyance: Each player is dealt one card face down, which they may look at and then return to the table. Each player is then dealt a five-card hand. Play proceeds as in California lowball (limit betting, low A-5 hand wins) except that if a player draws any cards, his first replacement comes from the "hole card" dealt to the player on his left.

Prognostication: Seven-card stud for high. The river cards for all players are dealt first; these river cards may be inspected by the player to the left. After that they must remain face-down until 7th street, at which point the player that owns the card may take it into his hand.

Vero Beach: Seven-card stud, hi/lo. Each player is dealt their 7th-street card first, but must place it on their forehead so that all the other players may observe it (while they cannot) until 7th street.

Re: Bored now. Invent a novel poker variant.
 

Sick thanks for the links guys...why I've never heard of it before IDK, I've read Frank B's listing way back when.

Strat vs thinking players seems almost endlessly recursive. How do you bet someone off anything? If the best hand gets a portion then it's just insane.

If anyone's in Vegas on July 6th I'm gonna make sure we play this at a 2+2 magoo-fest!

--GA

Re: Bored now. Invent a novel poker variant.
 

We have played omadraw H/L a few times. After the flop you have the option to draw up to two cards.

Position is huge in this game as the draw can often reveal a players hand.

Re: Bored now. Invent a novel poker variant.
 

I'm sure people have tried to create games like this before, but...
what about a Stud/Hold'em hybrid. Could be played hi/hi-lo/lo.

2 down cards to each player
betting
1 up card to each player
betting
3 community cards
betting
1 down card to each player
betting

Has it been tried ?
Is it interesting?

Tx.