The smaller deck also affects the likelihood of being dealt certain hands.

While you're still looking for the same eight outs there are fewer total cards in the deck, thus increasing the percentage you'll make your straight. Just to highlight one example, filling an open-ended straight draw becomes more likely in poker short-deck. The odds of hitting certain draws change, too, in short-deck pokr. Straights and full houses are also easier to make in six-plus hold'em than in the regular version of the game (a reason for the alternate hand rankings). The smaller deck makes it easier to make two-pair hands, which means a hand like top pair-top kicker is no longer as strong in six-plus hold'em as it is in regular hold'em. You should adjust your thinking about relative hand values from what they are used to in regular hold'em. The building of hands resembles the procedure followed in Omaha poker where players must use two of their four hole cards plus three board cards to make a five-card poker hand.Īs you might imagine, the removal of low cards and use of the 36-card deck makes it more likely to make higher value hands, a change that tends to introduce more action. Players then make their five-cardpoker hands by using exactly two of their three hole cards and three of the four community cards. More often, though, instead of a river card being dealt to complete a five-card board, players are each dealt a third hole card instead. The game can be played according to the same procedure followed in regular hold'em, with the community cards coming in the same way - flop (three cards), turn (one card), and river (one card) - and betting rounds after each street.

One other popular variation often introduced in six-plus hold'em has to do with the way the river is dealt. Six-Plus Hold'em Variation - The Deal (Fifth Street) These changes were introduced the because the removal of cards from the standard deck alter the probabilities of making certain hands.įor example, with only nine suited cards (instead of 13), a flush is harder to make in shord-deck poker than in regular hold'em. As you can see, following these alternate poker short deck hand rankings a three-of-a-kind beats a straight (instead of vice-versa), and a flush beats a full house (instead of vice-versa).

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