Short Deck Hold’em vs Regular Hold’em - Rules and Variations
Many variations of poker games exist, and Short Deck Hold’em is arguably one of the rising stars in poker tournaments. Since it’s received more attention in the last few years, it’s quickly becoming an exciting alternative to the regular Texas Hold’em games. In this article, we’ll look at how to play this game, its rule variations, and hand rankings.
The Rules
The main difference between this game and its standard version is that you remove all the deuces to five cards from the standard 52-card deck. That means you remove the twos, threes, fours, and fives and play with 36 cards instead.
As such, there are a few rule variations. The Ace still acts as the highest and lowest card in the deck, depending on what you need, but its lowest value is now five. You receive two hole cards, the same as the standard version, and have five cards for the community. It also features the four streets of betting, namely pre-flop, flop, turn, and river.
A flush is much harder to hit in this variant, so it always ranks over the full house in short deck games. However, on the other hand, it’s much easier to hit a set than in the standard variation.
Different Hold’em Rankings
While the actual game rules don’t differ significantly from the standard version, the rankings for hands have some crucial changes. Below, we look at these changes, also considering the alternative hand rankings of the Triton Poker Series, which holds straights as higher than three-of-a-kind, despite this hand being more common than three-of-a-kind.
Strategies
Thanks to the crucial difference in hand values, the strategies players use with this game also have some changes.
- The original rule of two and four becomes three and six since fewer cards are in the deck. On the flop, multiply the number of outs by three or six to see the chances of making the hand by the turn or river
- Flush Draws are often a losing hand with probabilities of 15% by the turn and 30% by the river, while Straight Draws have better value, with a 45% chance to hit by the river.
- Players need stronger post-flop hands, so we recommend adjusting the game accordingly.
- There’s double the chance of being dealt pocket Aces, but top pair and top kicker hands have much lower values.
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