| Should You Play Non-Standard Games? |
| by Andrew Glazer,
published on Tuesday, June 25 2002 |
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| Printable
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On one of the many trips I've been taking recently, a friend invited me to play in his regular home game (although technically it's not played in a home, but in a private club). This was the sort of poker game on which I cut my poker teeth: no hold'em, no seven-card stud, no four-card Omaha, and indeed no game you could find in any regular card casino in the world.
Instead, I was treated to a collection of some of the most bizarre poker variations I've ever seen. Some of them I actually had seen, like Big Cross (five cards in a vertical column, five cards in a horizontal row, with the center card belonging to each, use two cards from your hand, three from one of the rows, and oh, yes, like just about every other game in the mix, you could replace a card in your hand at the end for an extra fee). Most I had not only not seen, I could only wonder what twisted soul had invented them. Most of the souls in the game didn't seem twisted. Well educated, yes, twisted, no. Maybe I don't read people as well as I think I do.
Although the Good Lord spared me the need to deal with wild cards, it seemed like I was learning a new game on almost every deal, and to make things worse, in some games, the wheel (A-2-3-4-5) was the perfect low and in others 6-4 was. Remember which was which proved a problem for me twice.
Thanks to a rather well-timed straight flush when we were playing double stakes "Elevator" on the game's penultimate hand (when you see ten or twelve cards in a game, the odds against seeing a straight flush drop rather remarkably: I haven't had one in hold'em in five years, and on this day I had two of them, one a royal), I wound up the big winner despite my beginner status in the odds on these nonstandard games, and they awakened an old question of mine: is playing these non-standard games a good idea?
At one level, of course they are a good idea, if the participants enjoy them, and this group seemed to get along quite nicely. I used to remember enjoying these non-standard games quite a bit, and usually when a friend or newcomer came into the group, he got his head handed to him, because he didn't have a good feel for what sort of hands it took to win what kind of oddball games. I won because I'm a little better than the typical friend or newcomer, and because I caught some good cards at the right times.
Although unusual games usually provide the regulars with a "home court advantage" when a newcomer invades their home turf, the problem comes when the players leave the sanctity of their hallowed home halls and go play the kind of games they play in casinos. I thought I was a good poker player, back when I lived in Atlanta, because I beat the games pretty regularly, but it turned out I was winning only because I was playing against players weaker than me.
When I hit the casinos, not only did I meet more experienced players when measured by hours in the chair, I found I knew very little about the games I could expect to play in casinos, and it took me a while to adapt my knowledge of how to play "Juice" (six-card stud, one down, four up, one down, replace a card at the end for $5, no qualifier, played high-low declare) to how to play more conventional seven-card stud, eight-or-better for low.
If you have ambitions towards playing poker in casinos or cardrooms, I suggest you introduce some conventional casino games into your regular home game line-up, or you will probably have your head handed to you by the folks who play regularly in casinos, even the low stakes players.
I'm not a "poker snob." I don't consider these non-standard games "not poker" the way some professionals do. They certainly aren't conventional poker, but as long as the rules are known in advance, and as long as hands that are harder to obtain beat hands that are easier to obtain (for example, I wouldn't consider a game where two pair beat trips for high to be "real poker"), the games are poker. Just recognize that if you're going to stray from the nest, the knowledge you've acquired playing "Elevator" may not help you keep your stack of chips from dropping down to basement levels.
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Should You Play Non-Standard Games?
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