Non-Standard Games are Great
Part II

BY: Ashley Adams
Contact at: (Asha34@aol.com)
Author of Winning 7-Card Stud

In my last column I mentioned an interesting home game in Maine where I played with a few local guys who liked both the modern no limit hold 'em games and the more traditional home games like "Follow the Queen" and other unusual poker variations. As if to illustrate how popular all of those special home games still are, I played the very next night when I returned home to Boston.

An old friend from college days invited me to play with his buddies. Unlike the Maine crew, these were all serious, accomplished professional guys. They all seemed prosperous and otherwise successful - capable of playing in standard $5/10 or $10/20 casino games if they wished.

But, for the most part, they didn't wish it - not at all. What they wanted to play was the typical line up (and in some case not too typical) of Dealer's Choice games at very low stakes. Though they may have watched poker on television - they were not easily seduced by the allure of no limit hold 'em.

We played for a little more than three hours. During that time I was introduced to the following games: Shifting Sands, Hour Glass, Echo Park, Pyramid, and Follow the Queen - Progressive. We played their interesting twist on Omaha and Hold 'em as well as a couple of games I called - including Jackdaw (both its six and seven card variety), 7-Card Stud hilo, low card in the hole wild with an eight card and "insurance, and 5-card draw hilo roll your own.

All of these games were fascinating. Shifting Sands and Echo Park were essentially 5-card stud games with a wild down card, with the option of changing your down card for a new down card as the game progressed. Hour Glass and Pyramid were common card games like Omaha, with the added twist in Hour Glass of a row of cards, any one of which could be added to your hand as a wild card - with all of its rank also wild. Follow the Queen - progressive underlays a system for adding a wild card to the game, insuring that even if the Queen doesn't appear there will be at least one rank of cards that is wild. They played all of these games hilo declare - with the addition at times of an 8 low as a qualifier.

Jackdaw is a game that combines an element of bidding to poker - where players bid on the first up card per round, placing their winning bids into the pot. In all other respects it follows the rules of any of hilo stud, and can be played as a five, six or seven card game.

Here are some thoughts on strategy - though with the very low stakes version of these games (they played for $.25, $.50 and $1.00 bets) you might just enjoy the camaraderie and forget about serious competition.

First of all, just because there are wild cards and many twists and turns doesn't mean that the general strategy concerns of poker don't apply. For example, the best starting hands have a better chance of becoming winning hands. Hands become more clearly defined when three cards are revealed at once instead of one card. In hilo games, hands that have at least some strong possibility for going low have a large advantage over strictly one-way high hands - because they can scoop the pot. Similarly, your board is a very big consideration in these games - since your opponents may blunder into a mistaken declare based on the hand it looks like you have.

In Dealer's Choice home games like this pots tend to be very, very large by the last betting round when compared with the bet size. So it is nearly always correct to call on the River if you think there's any chance of winning. This is probably the biggest mistake that most home game players make. The good players make too many "good" lay downs on the River based on their final assessment of whether they're ahead or not. I saw an example of this in this game, when a player who didn't seem to have a clue bet strongly throughout. Another player, who was very observant and thoughtful, called him the whole way. On the River the new player bet again. The "good" player thought and thought, read his opponent's board, remembered the folded downcards of his other opponents no doubt, and concluded that he was beaten - folding his hand. The new player exclaimed "Good Fold", tossed over his down cards announcing "Four Queens" revealing in the process that he really only had two pair because he had misunderstood the rules and misread his hand. His opponent announced, sadly, that he had folded the winning hand. The pot was $37.25. The final bet was $1.00.

Another consideration is the advantage of a game to the person who calls it. I'm not talking about figuring out whether this is his best game or not. I'm talking about inherent advantages that accrue to the dealer based on the structure of the game.

Consider the following twist. After a very long and interesting version of 5-card hilo stud, a player may replace a card. The replacement option begins to the left of the dealer. Seems to make sense at first. But think about it. If the replacement option is consecutive like this, starting to the left of the dealer and ending with the dealer, then the dealer gets to see how each person replaces his cards before he has to decide what to do. Since the game is 5-card stud hilo, the dealer will know, with fairly keen accuracy, how each remaining player is planning to declare. If, for example, a player with (x) A-5-7-7 replaces the 7 it's fair to assume that he's going for low. If, on the other hand, he replaces the 5, he's probably going high. This gives the dealer an amount of extra information that borders on unfair.

How you decide to react to games like this is obviously up to you. You can try to get the host to change the rules (generally a very bad idea). You can just play very tightly yourself when a dealer calls a game like this, knowing that you're going to need a strong two-way hand most of the time to compete fairly. And you can, of course, call your own dealer advantage game. They call consecutive replace? You can call consecutive declare! Talk about a dealer advantage. You get to see how everyone declares before you declare.

The structure of the game also dictates how much luck is involved in the eventual outcome. Generally, games with wild cards can be as skillful as games without them - more skillful to some extent because of how wild cards change the standard value of a poker hand. Inexperienced or unthoughtful poker players often overvalue their hands in a wild card game - not realizing how having an entire rank declared wild for each player tends to greatly increase the power of a winning hand. Four of a kind, in a game with two ranks declared wild, may be an awful hand. A full house, in a game where each player's low card is wild, may also be a similarly bad hand.

This all being said, some of these dealer's choice games are truly luck fests. Consider the following. In one game each player is dealt five cards. He may use his cards in combination with all of the cards that will eventually be dealt face up on the board. They are dealt as follows: one up card, one up card, and then three up cards that are all wild. Hand values change so much on the last round both because of the many cards that are exposed and because they are wild, which even a thoughtful and observant player really has no idea what his hand will be until that point. If bets stay the same through the betting action and players are aggressive early, players will be faced with the conundrum of having to stay to see the last row exposed while also having to call the bet almost regardless of the strength of their hand - since the pot will be so large compared to their final bet.

Even so, a good player can enjoy himself while also practicing his poker skills during most if not all of the games people tend to call at home. And besides, since a large part of having these home games is to have fun, you don't have to be worried that each session needs to be a winning session. Sometimes a game can be just a game.

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