[greggg230]

My friend I were playing some heads-up PLO8 and NLHE and we decided we'd try some variants neither of us had played before. I was familiar with a game called Southern Cross, though I hadn't played it before. We looked up the rules and it was just completely awful (at least according to the rules we played - there were 10 rounds of betting).

So, we decided to change it up a little and here's what we came up with:

1) Players are dealt 5 cards face down
2) Betting round (we did SB/BB limit)
3) Board is laid out like Southern Cross - 9 cards laid out in the shape of a cross. The 4 cards on the ends of the cross are revealed.
4) Betting round
5) Each player discards one card
6) 4 cards on the inside of each of the beams of the cross are revealed.
7) Betting round
8) Each player discards one card
9) Center card is revealed.
10) Betting round
11) Player with the best hand using 0-2 of his hole cards and 3-5 of the board cards that are on the same beam of the cross wins.

The only problem we had was that, especially if there is a raise pre-flop, it's very rare to want to fold on the flop. You're paying one small bet to see 4 more cards, getting at least 3:1, possibly 5:1 or better.

The possible solutions to this would be change the betting structure to No Limit or Pot Limit (I was leaning towards NL, but my friend suggested PL) or to make the middle cards be revealed two at a time.

All thoughts / comments are appreciated. The game actually was really good and generated a ton of action.