We play a dealer's choice home game every week. It's slowly evolved from just NLHE to also include PLO, then Pineapple, and now "pineapple PLO", where each player is dealt 5 cards and you have to discard one.
Anyone got any fun game modes to break out at a home game (preferably ones with a no limit or pot limit betting structure)
Posted Apr 5, 2018, 9:16 PM UTC · edited
Some in my group like a game called Tahoe which is like Omaha except you must use 3 in your hand and 2 on the board. I find that it kills action because nobody knows what the fuck they have and people can always have a FH even when there's no board pair.
If you want to add something interesting we've done this. Get a solo cup or a a small jar and put it next to the UTG player have the UTG player put w.e a straddle amount is into the cup. this isn't a straddle and action still starts with UTG and that money doesnt belong to him. If the hand is won by the UTG player that player gets any money in cup. If the pot isnt won by the UTG player any money in the cup stays and is passed to the next UTG player.
so effectively you have an out of position player incentivized to play every single hand and this helps build action.
Love this idea man. I'll be trying this out for sure.
There's a game where you start with 5 cards, play Omaha and the best hand wins half the pot and the best starting 5 card hand wins half
I've also seen it where there is a draw phase after the flop. It's pretty fun, although the 5 card hand is OP as fuck.
Sounds like Dawmaha.
yeah or sviten special
The strategy revolves around making your 5 card hand, then just hoping to survive the Omaha.
"Jackie Robinson". (42)
Get dealt 6 cards. Split into a Hold em hand and an Omaha hand. Then 5 community cards and a split pot.
Also, "Pittsburgh Hold em". Three rivers.
This is called SOHE when we play it. "Simultaneous Omaha & Hold Em"
how do you pronounce that?
"Ess-oh-eych-ee"
sew-hee
Tic-Tac-Dough
Everyone is dealt two cards face down and there are 9 cards placed face down in the center of the table. Round of betting, then someone turns two center cards face up. Repeat a betting round and a flipping round until all cards face up are turned over. One final betting round, and then showdown.
You can only use the two cards in your hand and three cards on the table in a line, ala tic-tac-toe. Diagonals count, too.
It's stupid, but it's a lot of fun!
this seems insane but fun
Try corchevel. It's an Omaha variant where you get to see the first card on the flop, and are dealt 6 cards. Joker stars has tournament and cash games
Courchevel is traditionally played with 5 cards. Though you can use as many as you want.
6 plus holdem. You discard all cards below a 6 and play regular holdem.
Texihaw. Each player gets 6 cards preflop, split them into 2 hands, an omaha hand and a hold em hand. Your 2 hands must remain separate for the rest of the hand. At showdown the pot is split, 1/2 goes to the highest hold em hand, 1/2 to the highest omaha hand. Usually played pot limit.
This is called SOHE when we play it. "Simultaneous Omaha & Hold Em"
Sounds fun but dealing with so many split pots and everyone trying to figure out what they have probably makes this crawl at 5 hands an hour.
It's actually less complex than PLO High/Low, we just show the Hold Em hand first, then the Omaha hand.
We're pretty into split pot games.
I have a few Omaha variants. One of them I call “Draft Omaha”. Let’s say we have 5 people:
Everyone is dealt two cards face down (you are allowed to look) , and then 10 cards are dealt face-up on the table. The person to the left of the dealer chooses a card to add to their hand. Then the next player, the next, etc. when it’s the dealer’s time to choose, he picks two cards. Then the person to the right pick their second one, etc.
The goal is that the person to pick first also has to pick last, while the dealer gets to pick both at the same time.
So now you have a PLO hand where two cards are face down and two are face up. Play as normal. (You can play where you have to memorize everyone’s hand and then they get to put it face down)
Meh I’m too tired to write out the rest of them
this sounds like it'd take ages.
Meh it actually goes pretty fast once people know what they’re doing. Takes like 1 minute to do the “draft”
Pass the shit.
Stud high lo game, get two cards face down as normal. First card up, you can pass or keep, goes to next player and so forth. If you keep, another face up card is offered to the next player who can then pass, and so forth. People who didn't keep their upcards are filled in with random ones. Continue betting rounds as a normal stud game. When betting round is over, do another pass/keep round (4 total, for each upcard) and a betting round after each one, and a final betting round after the last downcard is dealt.
First position has a big advantage, and can keep the best cards, and defend against others by keeping cards that might help their boards. So playing super loose in the first few positions/basically just taking good low cards and repping them is a viable strategy, and you need to tighten up a lot in later positions. We play pot limit which is crazy af but there are a lot of big gamblers in my home game.
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Sviten special
We used to have a lot of fun with Irish poker. Everyone is dealt 4 cards. Post flop, after betting but before turn is dealt, everyone discards 2 cards from their hand. The rest of the hand is played like normal holdem. We also started playing double board Irish. Same as Irish, but there are 2 flops, turns and rivers. Can make it interesting to decide which cards to keep for a decent hand on both boards.
We also played a slight variant of pineapple where you expose your discarded card. It gives some extra information and can make for some interesting bluffs if you discard and show an ace for example
We sometimes throw in a couple hands of degenerated version of pineapple where instead of choosing the discard card on your own the player to your left randomly discards for you on the flop.
Just yesterday we came up with an interesting and stupid idea of playing SBPLO where everyone gets a normal two card holdem hand but the small blind gets a four card omaha hand.
It's not conventional poker, in the sense that it involves wild cards, but it is still the best game I've played.
http://www.poker.com/game/guts-poker-games/357.htm
We play a slightly different version where we all hold our cards in the air and the dealer counts "3-2-1 drop". All players that stay in exchange hole cards and payout the winner.
The fun part is when, say, a player has 55A for his 3 card hand. He and another player stay in Rd 1 and exchange hole cards. Now the opponent knows that next round, he has trip aces at minimum, so he'll definitely bow out. It's hysterical when that happens and then you get to watch another player stay in and get waxed.