No Limit Player’s Guide to Short Deck Poker

ACR Poker this week released its no limit player's guide to short deck poker, courtesy of poker writer Will Watson.

So What is Short Deck Poker Exactly?

Short deck poker, also called "Six-plus Hold'em", is a variation of Texas Hold'em where the 2, 3, 4, and 5 cards are removed from the deck, resulting in a 36-card deck, as opposed to the standard 52-card deck. What results is a much faster-paced game with a higher frequency of strong hands and more emphasis on big pots; essentially, players use a smaller deck to create their best five-card hand with the same basic rules as regular Hold'em.

Instead of the usual small and big blinds of NLH, in SDP every player at the table antes one blind to start, with the button being forced to contribute one additional blind to the pot. This means that in a six-handed game, for example, each pot begins with 7 blinds in the middle, giving players lots of incentive to get in the action.

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What To Expect

When playing SDP, prepare to see a ton more preflop limping than you would in traditional NLH. Since hand equities run much closer together, the preflop advantage for all hands is far less significant. This means that if you treat your hands like NLH and do a lot of raising and isolating preflop, you will find yourself in far too many unfavorable scenarios postflop. To illustrate the point, in SDP AK is only a 44 percent underdog to KK, a full 10 percentage points higher than in NLH.

Another key difference you should expect to see at the SDP tables is a lot more overbetting and all-ins. This happens for a number of reasons, including the previously mentioned close-running hand equities, to extract value from inexperienced SDP players who overvalue traditional NLH holdings, as well as one reason I’ll discuss below.

Intro To SDP Strategy

In his guide, Watson stresses the power of draws.

Rather than multiplying your outs by 4 and 2 on the flop and turn to find your likelihood of hitting it, you can multiply them by 6 and 3 in SDP.

With far fewer “bricks” in the deck, draws, and particularly straight draws of the open-ended variety (OESD) are far more valuable than they are in NLH. To put it into perspective, in NLH you have 31.5% odds of hitting your open-ender by the river while in SDP you have a whopping 45%. This is yet another reason you’re likely to see a lot of overbetting in SDP, since you are able to play your straight draws much more aggressively and still be in comparatively decent shape when called.

Remember, too, it is easy to get carried away with the fast-paced action. Similarly to a game like Pot Limit Omaha, getting outdrawn is common. And if you think going card dead in NLH is tilting, try being dealt nothing but K8 and Q6 for an hour in a game that’s literally designed for action, Wilson writes.  Discipline is key.

Short Deck Poker is some of the most exciting and mentally stimulating sessions upon first learning NLH. 

- Ace King contributed to this report