The total number of starting hands is reduced from 1326 to 630, and the number of unique Short Deck starting hands is only 81, compared with 169 No Limit Hold’em starting hands. Official Poker Hand Rankings Know your poker hand order. A poker hand consists of five cards, which fall into several categories. Below is the complete list of poker hands, from highest to lowest. Please note that hand rankings for Short Deck are slightly different. Find out more about the short deck poker hand rankings on the dedicated page. Six-plus hold 'em (also known as short-deck hold 'em) is a community card poker game variant of Texas hold 'em, where the 2 through 5 cards are removed from the deck. Each player is dealt two cards face down and seeks to make the best five card poker hand from any combination of the seven cards (five community cards and their own two hole cards). What is Short Deck? To play short deck, we simply remove the deuces, threes, fours, and fives from the deck. We now have a 36-card deck in which sixes are lowest. Because this deck is smaller, it juices up the action and changes the odds of hitting various hands. One key difference is that a low straight in short deck is A-6-7-8-9. Rules Variations. Short Deck Poker Strategy As already noted, hand values tend to be higher in short deck hold’em, which means one-pair hands aren’t going to be as strong postflop in short deck as they are in.
- Short Deck Poker Strategy
- Short Deck Poker Hands Designs
- Short Deck Poker Hand Rankings
- Short Deck Poker Hand Calculator
- Short Deck Poker Hands Games
Short deck NL hold’em - also known as 6-plus hold’em - is currently enjoying another ramp up in popularity. Three or four years ago, it appeared in the public eye for the first time when the likes of Phil Ivey and Tom Dwan were reportedly playing it in nosebleed live cash games around Asia against rich businessmen.
Many players have said it’s almost a hybrid of NL and PLO because of how close the equities tend to run together. A consequence of this is that all in clashes pre-flop are much more common. Perhaps more suitable for somebody looking for mobile no deposit free spins than a seasoned poker player.
This is all because the deuces through fives are removed from the deck, leaving only 36 cards. We might be forgiven for thinking little would change, but in fact, the hand rankings are quite different. A flush now beats a full house, and three of a kind sits in front of a straight!
Short Deck Poker Strategy
Why Short Deck Is an Action Game
With the hand rankings changing around slightly, we can also see that the chances of making your draw are different too.
Obviously you still have eight outs to complete a straight draw, but instead of digging through 47 cards to hit jackpot, there are now only 31 to contend with. Now we will hit our straight more than 45% of the time.
Already we have seen that a flush is rarer than a full house, but we will still complete the draw more than 30% of the time, in comparison to 36% in normal NL hold’em.
Another Rule Change
Savvy players of standard NL hold’em will be familiar with what is known as “the rule of two and four”. In short deck games we must switch to “the rule of three and six”.
To clarify for newer players, what we mean is on the flop we can multiply our outs by six and the result is our equity, or on the turn we multiply our outs by three to know our equity.
Don’t Be Deceived By So Many Strong Hands
Short Deck Poker Hands Designs
With only 630 starting hands possible compared to the usual 1326, we can expect to see powerhouse starting hands much more frequently. For example, pocket aces will arrive in front of you every around once every 100 hands, instead of every 221 using a full deck. Ace-king is also seen twice as often.
The problem here is that it actually becomes quite deceiving in terms of absolute strength versus relative strength. This can be illustrated by thinking about how well we view two broadway cards in normal hold’em - it’s a fairly decent hand right? Playing short deck rules we will be dealt such a hand close to one third of the time!
An Illustrative Hand
Short Deck Poker Hand Rankings
This hand illustrates the wildly different pre flop equities we witness when playing short deck hold’em. It comes from the recent Triton Poker Series in Jeju, South Korea, during a Short Deck Ante Only tournament.
The antes are 3,000 each hand,except the button who pays 6,000.
UTG limps with pocket aces and the HJ raises it up to 25,000 with AcQd. The CO calls with Js9s and while the BTN considers his move we get to see what the equities are.
UTG - AA - 30%
HJ - AQo - 12%
CO - J9s - 32%
BTN - 22%
So J9s is actually a favourite over pocket rockets in a four-way pot. Usually, the results wouldn’t look like this. Here is what we would usually see.
UTG - AA - 55%
Short Deck Poker Hand Calculator
HJ - AQo - 5%
Short Deck Poker Hands Games
CO - J9s - 19%
BTN - 21%
In the end, the BTN0 folds preflop and UTG then completes his original plan by jamming all-in. This how the match ups look now.
UTG - AA - 49% - 263,000
HJ - AQo - 12% - 71,000
CO - J9s - 34% - 54,000
Why Should We Play Short Deck Rules?
For a start, action games always attract players who are prepared to gamble it up. This is not only good for your overall enjoyment, but it increases potential profit too. It’s also good to get involved with new games while everyone is still finding their feet. The best players at each stake level will not have had much time to increase their edge over everyone else. There’s also not much information out there yet, making it a much closer contest.
Stars such as Phil Ivey heartily endorse the game. He told the media:
I started playing Short Deck recently, it has quickly become one of my favorite games. I enjoy playing it. It's fun, it's something different, it's new and 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.'