Mambo Stud

[zymmyz]

So according to NJ state regulations, one of the poker games AC card rooms are authorized to spread is Mambo stud. I had never heard of this game till I read the act, and was wondering if anyone had ever seen it spread, and whether people would be interested in trying to get somewhere to spread it, for novelty value if nothing else.

http://www.state.nj.us/casinos/actre...ter_47.html#14

Section 19:47-14.13A

[Cornell Fiji]

I've never heard of it so I went here:
http://www.google.com/search?q=Mambo+stu...lient=firefox-a

It seems Lou Krieger played it at the Taj in 1998. His primer (last link) describes the game pretty well. Looks interesting.

[ QUOTE ]
Mambo Stud

Refers to a type of stud poker that combines stud with a widow game in which players use three cards in their hands plus one community card, played high-low. The game plays out as follows: Each player is dealt one up card and one down card, followed by a round of betting. One more up card is dealt with another round of betting, and then a community card and a final round of betting. Players can use any combination of their four cards for high hand and any three for low hand.

SoundPoker Says: The hand rankings differ from regular poker. The highest-ranking low hand, called Low Mambo, is 3-2-A and the highest-ranking high hand, called High Mambo, is Q-K-A suited. The remaining high hands, in order from best to worst, rank as follows: straight flush, three of a kind, straight, flush, one pair, high card. The qualifier to win the low hand is the hand must be 6-high or better. Other examples of low hands are 4-3-2, or 6-4-A, the worst low hand being 6-5-4. As in any high-low split game, the pot can be scooped so that one hand wins both high and low.

http://www.answers.com/topic/mambo-s...=entertainment


[/ QUOTE ]

[ QUOTE ]
Lou Krieger is a Card Player Magazine Columnist: On Strategy. Lou is also a professional poker player and the author of Hold'em Excellence: From Beginner to Winner and MORE Hold'em Excellence: A Winner For Life. He also has a Website.

On 25 Nov 1998 13:55:16 GMT, in rec.gambling.poker loukrieger@aol.com (LouKrieger) wrote:

Authors Note: This is a long, nearly 4,000 word trip report, dealing with my recent trip to Atlantic City, and incorporating a primer on a new game just introduced there: Mambo Stud Poker.

It was an inauspicious beginning to a long-awaited trip as I pulled into my garage only to find that the building's carpet-installers had taken over my parking spot, where they were busily trimming carpet prior to hauling it upstairs to renovate a vacant apartment.

"Hey," I said, "that's my spot. You can't work there." One of them looked up at me and mumbled, "No habla Ingles."

"Mueva te, por favor," I shouted in Spanish, to which he shrugged his shoulders, gazed my way, and wearily intoned, "No habla Espanol, either." I had no choice. I parked on the street, and waited for them to finish their work and go home, before I could claim my spot. The clock radio awakened me at 4:00 a.m., and it showed no remorse either. I would have thought that KLON, Long Beach's 24-hour all-Jazz radio station, would be playing some mellow Sonny Rollins or Miles Davis cut at that hour. Instead, I was awakened by Poncho Sanchez, Southern California's primo congero, beating out a long solo on his conga drum, while the brass section of his big band punctuated his rhythmic offerings.

I packed quickly, showered and donned my traveling gear to await my ride to the airport, where I was catching a 6:30 a.m. flight to Salt lake City, where I'd connect with a flight heading into Newark airport.

I was tired, and not quite awake, but I did get lucky. I had the seats to myself on both flights, so I could curl up and snore my way across the continent, eventually arriving at Newark at 4:45 p.m., eastern standard time.

I was headed to the Taj Mahal where they were scheduled to introduce Mambo Stud Poker, a new card game, in their poker room.

The Taj had sent a limo for me and I gratefully sank into the back seat, opened a bottle of mineral water, and relaxed as the driver glided through the rainy night on the way to Atlantic City. Forty minutes later I spied a road sign indicating a gas station and food court up ahead. "Let's stop for a minute," I told the driver, adding "I was brought up in Brooklyn, and the sign says there's a Nathan's there."

When you are born and reared in Brooklyn, a Nathan's hot dog along with an order of their fries transcends fast food - it is a pilgrimage to your soul. A hot dog and fries may be just a gut bomb to outlanders, but when you're Brooklyn born and bred, it is a sacrament.

Full and warm and positively contented, I drifted away to the rhythms of the night and raindrops, until we pulled up to the front of the Taj Mahal. The last time I visited Atlantic City, poker hadn't been legalized yet, and I was eager to give it a go. To top it off, my brother would be driving down tomorrow from New York, and we would be able to hang for a day or so - just like we did in the old days before 3,000 miles, his business, and fatherhood put a crimp in our brotherly romps, road trips, and misadventures.

I was also eager to see people I knew but seldom see, like Tommy Gitto - an avid hockey fan like myself, I hoped he would take some pity on me considering the way his Rangers annihilated my Kings 5-1 the other night - as well as RGP posters, BARGE attendees, and poker chat friends. The first night I played, I found Scott Byron at my table, and ran into Tiger123 the following day. I also met online friends I'd chatted with, but never met before, like Pam Cardinale, Linda Sanders, and William Keck.

Mambo lessons were in full swing when I walked into the Taj Mahal's poker room. No, Tito Puente hadn't set up shop in the corner, and Poker Manager Tom Gitto wasn't spinning his old Perez Prado or La Playa Sextet records either. The Taj was spreading Mambo Stud Poker, created by Mambo Gaming Company LLC of Peekskill, N.Y., and the first entirely new game since casino poker was introduced in Atlantic City.

Bob Pinchbeck and Joe Bochichio, who created the game, believe Mambo will attract players for several reasons. "It's a pretty elementary high-low game, and since it has elements of stud, hold'em, and Omaha, we think it will appeal to a cross-section of players." According to Pinchbeck, "The average pot in a $1 - $5 stud game is $29. In Mambo, it's $70. That," he added, "means the casino's rake, as a percentage of the pot, is much smaller, and because Mambo is much faster than stud, more hands can be dealt each hour."

Mambo Stud Poker contains elements of 7-card stud, eight-or-better high/low split (7-stud/8), and hold'em with the speed of fast-action table games. Make no mistake about it, however, Mambo Stud Poker is not a hybrid table game designed to look like a poker game; it is a poker game. And a good one at that.

[ Click here for Lou Krieger's Mambo Stud Poker Primer ]

Right now Mambo Stud Poker is played only at the Taj Mahal in Atlantic City and only at low betting limits. But if the game captures the fancy of the players, and lives up to its abundant potential, it might not be too long before it's played everywhere.

While I was in Atlantic City I played almost every free hour. And that was quite a bit of poker, considering I had no more than four hours sleep on any given night. The $20-$40 hold'em games were different than California. I found players at the Taj to be very aggressive before the flop - almost every pot was raised - but the style of play was not quite so aggressive afterwards. Often a bet on the flop, or a check raise on the flop along with a bet on the turn, was sufficient to drive a preflop raiser off the pot, particularly if the flop contained no big cards.

I enjoyed the games, and won at every session. None of them were big wins, however, but a win is a win is a win, and I'm always happy to make some money at the tables. One particular pot - I don't remember all of the details - was capped with seven-way action before the flop and again on the flop. I had a draw for the nut flush. But it never came, and I missed out on a $1,400 pot I could have spent the weekend bragging about had I been fortunate enough to catch my card.

When I wasn't playing $20-$40 hold'em, I was playing $1-$5 Mambo Stud Poker, and found the game as enjoyable as I thought it would be when I read about it on the Mambo Gaming web site, located at http://www.mambogaming.com. When the table was full, Mambo was an exciting game; often eight, nine, and sometimes ten players called on the first round of betting. When the game was shorthanded late in the evening - just before it broke - it became very tight and was not enjoyable. I was winning about $12 per hour playing Mambo. True, I would need a much longer sample to claim any validity for my results, but the pots are quite large considering the limits are so small. Mambo seems to give good players a winning edge, without putting much money at risk.

It would be interesting to see how the game changed if it were played at the $10-$20 or $20-$40 level. I don't suspect you'd find ten players calling on the first betting round, although in the $20-$40 7-stud/8 games I play in Los Angeles, there are frequently more players hanging around until fifth street than there really ought to be.

The flight back was uneventful. It was long, late, and I slept through most of it. Once again, I was fortunate enough to have no seat mates, so I could stretch out. And when you're confined for five or six hours at 33,000 feet and there's nothing to do, my usual practice is to do nothing.

I enjoyed Atlantic City immensely. I didn't post a note to RGP announcing my trip, though I did mention it to some of my poker chat friends. I met a number of people whom I genuinely enjoyed socializing with, and by the second day - in spite of neither publicity nor solicitations surrounding my trip - more than a few folks approached me with well-worn copies of my books in hand, asking me to autograph them. And that, of course, is the fastest way to increase this author's hat size.

May life's cards keep falling your way.

Lou Krieger
Long Beach, CA
November 24, 1998

http://www.gocee.com/poker/trips/krieger_mambo.htm


[/ QUOTE ]

[ QUOTE ]
Mambo Stud Poker Primer by Lou Krieger
[ This article is a part of Lou Krieger's Atlantic City Trip Report. ]

Lou Krieger is a Card Player Magazine Columnist: On Strategy. Lou is also a professional poker player and the author of Hold'em Excellence: From Beginner to Winner and MORE Hold'em Excellence: A Winner For Life. He also has a Website.

Because Mambo Stud Poker is brand spanking new, there are no world class Mambo Stud mavens yet, only players trying to quickly convert skills learned in other games to this one. Mambo Stud Poker stands a good chance of gaining in popularity, and my thoughts on what it will take to become a consistent winner at Mambo follow.

I don't have a lot of experience playing Mambo yet - indeed, no one does - so this primer is likely to be refined before I'd consider it to be anything like the definitive word on this game. Instead of taking this as Gospel, think of it as a basic strategic construct - aimed at giving you a flying start when you sit down to play Mambo Stud Poker. To become a real expert, however, you'll have to keep honing and refining these concepts based on your experience playing the game.

Mambo Stud Poker is played with a standard deck of cards, and as many as 11 players can compete for a winning hand. Since Mambo is a split game, a player can compete for a high hand, a low hand, or a high/low hand that can scoop the pot. Once all the cards have been dealt, players who did not fold will have three cards in their hand, and a single community card will be exposed in the center of the table.

Players are allowed to use any combination of three of their four cards to form high or low hands. For example, if the 4h is the community card in the center of the table, and you hold AcAd2s in your hand, you would play AcAd4h for your high hand, and Ac2s4s for low. All four of your cards would have been used to form two different hands - one of which is a high hand, the other a low one.

Players can always compete unconditionally for a high hand, and if no player has at least a pair, the highest card would win the high end. But to compete for low, a player must have three cards with a rank of six or lower. This is referred to as needing a six-qualifier for low.

Mambo Stud Poker has three rounds of betting, and each player is required to post an ante. On the first round one card is dealt face down and another face up to each player. The player with the lowest ranked exposed card is forced to open the betting. Each player can then fold, call, or raise in turn. When that round of betting is complete another card is dealt face down to each player. Now the player with the highest ranking exposed card is first to act, and may check or bet his hand. Like any other form of poker, players who act subsequently may also check or bet. Once a bet is made, players may fold, call, or raise. Once the second betting round is complete, the dealer will turn a community card face up in the center of the table.

Now the player with the highest ranking poker hand is first to act, and can either check or bet. After the last player to act has responded to the action, the third and final round of betting is complete.

A showdown is used to determine the winner - or winners - of the pot. Each remaining player will form three card poker hands by using any combination of their three private cards along with the community card to form a high hand, a low hand, or both.

Because Mambo Stud Poker is based on three-card hands rather than on traditional five-card poker hands, hand rankings are slightly different than they are in traditional poker games. The best possible high hand is called a High Mambo. Comprised of Q-K-A of the same suit, it is, in essence, a mini royal flush, and not easily come by.

Next in ranking is a straight flush. Three of a kind is the next best hand, followed by a straight, then a flush. In Mambo Stud Poker, a straight outranks a flush. Next in order comes one pair, followed by a high card. Since you can use only three of your four cards to make a hand, you can't have two pair in Mambo Stud Poker.

The best low hand, is, of course, an 3-2-A. Examples of other low hands are 4-2-A, 4-3-2, and 6-4-A. The worst low hand is 6-5-4, and would win the low end only if there was no other low hand present. But it's also a straight, and might win for high. If you hold 3-2-A, it's called a "Low Mambo," and is the best possible low hand and can only be tied, not beaten. Moreover, it too is a straight, and in the absence of any other straight or higher hand, it will scoop the pot.

Scooping the pot is what high-low split games are all about, and Mambo Stud Poker is no different. When you split the pot, all you win is your own investment, plus half of the antes and any dead money contributed to the pot by players who have subsequently folded, or lost out at the showdown.

Scooping is the singularly most important strategic concept of any high-low split game. Every authority on high-low split poker suggests concentrating on hands that have a chance to scoop the entire pot. When you follow this strategy, you'll be playing low hands most of the time, since they can swing high much more readily than high hands can become low. Most high hands never become low hands. One exception is a hand like AA¨. You've got the best possible pair to begin with and if your next card is a good low, you have a draw to both ends of the pot.. Suppose your third card is 4§. If that community card is a deuce or a trey, you've got a great chance at making the best low hand as well as winning the high side with a pair of aces. If that community card is an ace, you won't make a low hand, but you have a high hand that's tough to beat.

If the community card is any other low card, you will hold a low hand, but unless you observe the board cards of your opponents, you won't know whether your hand figures to be the best low or not. Any high card might hurt you, however, since flushes are more prevalent in Mambo than in other poker games.

If that community card is the same suit as one of your opponents' up-cards, you must suspect him of holding a flush.

In addition, if the community card is a rank adjacent to any of your opponents' up cards, you must also suspect a straight. The bigger the gap between the up card of your opponents and the community card, the less likely it is that a straight will be present.

As in any other high-low game, you need to evaluate your potential low hand in relation to the board cards, rather than examining them in a vacuum. Is 6-4-2 a good hand? What about 5-4-A? Perhaps, but maybe not. It depends on the exposed cards on the table. If yours is the only low card showing, you are probably the only player competing for low. When you have the only low hand competing against an entire table full of opponents going high, life is sweet. If you're facing four opponents with high hands, and you have a low, each dollar you invest in the pot will earn two dollars profit. But if you are the second best low hand, it doesn't matter how good your low hand might look; it won't get the money.

Whenever you hold a made low hand along with a draw to a straight or flush, and your opponent is obviously going high, you should raise anytime your opponent bets. After all, you have a lock on half the pot and are free rolling for the high side. If you are the only low against a group of high hands, you must also raise at every opportunity. Once again, you probably have a lock on the low end of the pot. Even if you have no chance of making a high hand, with more than one opponent chasing the high end of the pot, you will get back more than a dollar for every one you wager.

But the corollary does not hold true. If you have the only high hand, and are up against a number of hands that look like low draws, you may not wind up with the best high hand if one of your opponents backs into a straight or flush. When you're the one with a high hand, you'll need one stronger than 4-5-6 to raise with impunity. That way, any low hand that swings high still won't be high enough to beat you, unless, of course, your opponent is fortunate enough to make a straight flush or three of a kind.

Since pairs won't usually win unless you're playing in a very short-handed game, three of a kind is a rare hand. If you peek down at your first two cards and see K-K staring back at you, don't start jumping for joy. A pair is not worth much in Mambo. In a full game, the high side will usually be won by a straight or a flush - not a pair. One of the benefits of starting with a pair in poker games where you play your best five-card hand is that you've got a number of opportunities to catch a third card of that rank, and you might also make two pair. In Mambo, neither of those opportunities present themselves. Since you are playing your best three-card hand, it is impossible to make two pair, and you have fewer opportunities to catch a mate to your wired pair. Other that a pair of aces with a small, suited side card, pairs are just not worth much in Mambo Stud Poker.

One unique attribute of Mambo Stud Poker is that once the first round of cards are exposed, you know the order of betting for that round, as well as the next. The low board card brings it in, and the high board card will be first to act on the succeeding round. It pays to evaluate your position from both perspectives. If you know you will act after most of your opponents on the succeeding round, you can raise if you make a good hand. If you know that you will act early on the next round, you are in prime check raising position if you make your hand.

In seven card stud, the player who acts first often changes with each succeeding betting round, but in Mambo, you know the order of betting for the first two betting rounds. The final round of betting is determined by the best hand showing. The best visible hand will either be a pair matching the community card, or the same high card that acted first on the preceding round

In conventional poker games, where the best five card hand wins, it is very rare to see two players make a flush in the same suit. But with three-card Mambo hands you'll find the same flushes in-suit more frequently. The strategic implications of this quickly become apparent Don't get trapped holding a flush lower than your opponent.

As a general rule, only ace-high flushes have any great value, although a lesser flush coupled with a low hand will certainly prove to be playable, since it has the potential to scoop. But remember, not only is an ace high flush the highest flush you can make, that ace is also the best low card you can hold. It's also worth noting that you can lose both ends of a pot even when holding what appears to be a good two-way hand. You need to be cognizant of the board and the betting action of your opponents before deciding whether to call, or throw your hand away and await a better opportunity.

Like most forms of poker, the cards you start with are all important. Mambo poker is cruel to players who call with one high card and a low one. Those hands offer very little potential and should be thrown away without hesitation. Even when suited high and low cards make a flush, it will not be an ace-high flush. If your first two cards contain an ace, however, you will either have a potential high or low hand, as well as a hand that may be able to make a low straight or low flush - and scoop the pot in the process. An ace in your hand will usually be playable, although hands like A-8 or even A-J offsuit are frequently more trouble than they're worth.

Two low suited cards are very playable, especially if they have straight as well as flush potential. It's ironic that hold'em's worst hand, a 3-2, may be the best possible starting hand in Mambo, particularly when it's suited. However, when you assess your chances of making the best low, you must be very aware of your opponents' board cards. If you're showing a five, and your opponent is showing a three, you won't know for sure if you have a better potential low hand than he does. But if he holds a hidden card lower than your board card, he will know with complete certainty that he is ahead of you in the race for the winning low hand. Moreover, if his cards are suited or can make a straight - and particularly if they are suited and connected and have straight flush potential - he has a powerful drawing hand, and is in a position to put a great deal of pressure on you by raising when it is his turn to act.

I hope this primer gives you a feeling for some of the strategic nuances of Mambo Stud Poker. Please bear in mind that these are preliminary thoughts based on three days of play. Although I firmly believe these strategic concepts will stand the test of time, I am also certain that I will refine them, and develop even more discerning insights as I play this action filled game in the future.

http://www.gocee.com/poker/mambostud.htm



[/ QUOTE ]

[jeramy576]

I wanna play this, I think it would be good times.

[vhawk01]

This would be amazing. I can just imagine watching the dealer's head asplode. There is no way this ever gets spread, but I may just ask for a list for it next time I go. Obv I will bring a printout of the AC gaming guidelines to prove my claim that its legit.

[jeramy576]

[ QUOTE ]
This would be amazing. I can just imagine watching the dealer's head asplode. There is no way this ever gets spread, but I may just ask for a list for it next time I go. Obv I will bring a printout of the AC gaming guidelines to prove my claim that its legit.

[/ QUOTE ]

I know it'll never be spread but its gonna be fun introducing this into my home game.