It’s raining cash in the fastest poker game in town This is the game where flushes beat full houses, you flop loads of sets, and say goodbye to pocket 3’s. It’s Short Deck Poker. This format is a favorite of both recreational players and high rollers alike. Short Deck, or 6+ Hold’em as it’s sometimes known, is the game of choice for the high stakes cash games and tournament specialists around the world. Check out the GGPoker lobby and you’ll see daily. One of the games that have seen a flurry of interest over the last few months is Six Plus Hold’em, also referred to as Short Deck Poker. Six Plus Hold’em is an exciting and fun poker variant based on Texas Hold’em where the game is played with a deck of 36 cards as opposed to the usual 52 cards in traditional hold’em.
What is “short-deck” poker? This is just one of the things Paul Phua discusses with Phil Ivey in the latest Paul Phua Poker School video, along with strategy tips for beginners
Do beginners have an easier time at poker these days? In the latest Paul Phua Poker School video, we welcome back the great Phil Ivey. Last time we talked about the thrills and challenges poker holds, even for a player as experienced as Phil. This time we focus on beginners to the game, as well as a fun variant on Texas Hold ’Em called “short-deck poker” or “Six Plus Hold ’Em”.
Poker can be a hard game to break into: experienced players may punish you if they sense weakness, and though it is easy to learn the basic rules, it can take a while to understand all the odds and strategies. But as Phil Ivey says in this video interview, “Because of all the information that’s available, with the different teaching schools and things that are available now, different ways of learning that are out there, and with Paul’s teaching site, I think everyone is catching up.”When Phil Ivey started out in poker, winning his first WSOP bracelet
when he was just 23, internet poker
was in its infancy. There were a few strategy books, such as Doyle Brunson’s Super System, but not the virtual library of tips that is out there now.“I didn’t have schools,” says Phil Ivey in the video interview. “I didn’t have teaching sites. I didn’t have different tools I could learn from.” His most important lessons, he says, came just from trial and error.
A big tip for beginners
So one big tip for beginners is to learn everything they can from sites like Paul Phua Poker! And always be aware that however much you think you know, there is always more to learn. As Phil Ivey points out in our video interview, “beginners have a certain selection of hands in their minds that they want to play, and they just stick with that”.
Instead, he encourages players to experiment: “Start learning which hands you can play, in which positions, which hands you can bluff with, which hands you should call with.”
And as I say in the video, your play should also vary according to the structure of the games – whether there are antes or straddles involved, for instance – as well as whether the other players are aggressive or tight.
If it sounds complicated, that’s because it is! Phil Ivey has devoted two decades to perfecting his game. I know Phil pretty well, as we have played together many, many times. And, as I also say in the video, I think one of the most impressive things about him is not just his grasp of strategy, but his strength of character. He just never seems to go on tilt, and that’s something I try to model myself on.
Short Deck Cash Game Rules
“Short-deck” or “Six-Plus Hold ’Em”
There are more useful tips in the video, so do watch it. But one thing I perhaps need to explain more is the “short deck game” that we talk about in the interview. We often like to play this game when we get together. It is very similar to Texas Hold ’Em, but with fewer cards.
Before you start you remove from the deck all the low cards, deuce through to 5, which is why the game is also known as “Six Plus Hold ’Em”. It’s a more exciting game than Texas Hold ’Em in many ways, because with the low cards taken out you are more often dealt high cards and big pairs. You also have to adapt to a different set of odds. Post-flop, you have a nearly 1 in 2 chance of completing an open-ended straight draw by the river, for instance, compared with nearly 1 in 3 in classic Texas Hold ’Em.
As Phil Ivey says in the video interview, “There’s a lot of gambling involved. The equities run pretty close, so it’s pretty easy to get your money in the middle and be 50/50 or somewhere near that. It suits a more gambling style of player.”
Phil thinks this makes the short-deck game perfect for the beginner. But if so, I have just one piece of advice. You still don’t want to be playing against Phil Ivey!
For more Paul Phua Poker School videos, subscribe to the YouTube channel. It’s free!
Triton Poker Short Deck Cash Game
Just a little over two months after PokerStars unveiled Six Plus Hold’em, PartyPoker has joined that party with its own stripped deck cash game. Stylized simply as SHORTDECK, the game has been made available at 6-max, 8-max as well as full ring games which makes it one of the largest debuts for a totally new game. However, the game is currently spread in a much more limited format, that is, it is only available at 6-max tables, with antes ranging from between 2 cents to $10.
Cash Game Strategy
Short deck poker, which is also referred to as six-plushold’em is card games where every card deuce through five are removed from the deck thus creating a36-deck card. The gameplay is similar to that of Texas Hold’em but there areusually some very hand ranking and structural differences between the two.
More in PartyPoker’s Version of the Game
The online poker operator’s short deck format, the pressernotes, rules will be the exact as same ones those of the widely popular TritonSuper High Roller Series. The antes aretherefore used in place of blinds and the double ante comes from the player onthe button with the action starting on the player’s immediate left. Also, the flasheswill beat full houses while the trips will still rank blow straights. With allthese, the game attracts a ton of action since all the players will have investedinto the pot – this pot is much larger than what one would find at a typical ortraditional hold’em game.
More recently, PartyPoker has released a software update that brought it Short Deck Hold’em game to many more people. As mentioned earlier, only cash games are available at launch but players should expect multi-table tournaments to be unveiled on the platform very soon. This will, however, be dependent on how popular the game becomes among the poker sites customers as well as the poker community as a whole.
“[It’s] the most action-packed poker game out there. Enough of boring waiting and folding. Here you can play half the cards dealt in a cash game and still do just fine. I’m a big fan of the format (my ante is posted even while writing this), and can’t wait to play my first hand on PartyPoker. See you at the tables,” Timofey Kuznetsov, a poker pro who is offering his support for the game said recently.
SHORTDECK can beaccessed through the new Short Deck tab on the poker operator’s lobby. There isalso a “blind lobby” that allows players to quickly select stake levelsas well as the number of seats at the tables, at which point the player isimmediately sat at the SHORTDECK gamingtables with a stack of 100 antes. Moreover, players will still be able to choosea table through the traditional cash gameslobby – here the player will be able to choose their starting stack size up to300 antes.
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