st cad has the idea.A wonderful game to fiddle opponents
If you chose to go both ways you must use the same five cards for both.Say a low flush,the wheel,etc.If you lose either you lose all.After all betting is done including the declare the player that is the only one that has gone high or low[if that’s the case]starts the betting but may not raise.you can see why.If two go high and one goes low ,that player is "locked in"and half the pot is his/hers
Sorry,I’m old and didn’t get the joke.Not much "simpsons."I’ve apologized twice since finding this site yesterday.Guess I’ve started off on the wrong hoof.But fire away.That’s how too learn.
I hope you don’t mind some mild criticism offered in the spirit of improving the game…
I assume the player doesn’t get to choose? As in, the first one is dealt face down, and the second face up, or vice versa? If so, then you have one problem in that you’re really exposing people’s hands. For example, if I show an 8 of clubs, and I bet, what other cards could I possibly have? If I’m known as a tight player, the only possibilities from early position are another 8, or maybe a 7c or 9c or Ac if I’m playing a little looser. Not much else is playable.
If this is just a ‘fun’ game and people are playing small stakes with wild abandon, this might not matter. But in a real game for real money against good players, this would be a problem.
If you instead change it to deal 3 cards per player, with one face up, and the player can choose to play the two hidden cards, then no extra information is being given, other than that everyone knows more about the cards left in the deck. Good players will be able to calculate the odds better and gain more advantage.
One thing you might be able to do to increase the action and to improve the strategy is to have a very small bet/ante after the first two cards, and then the small-sized bet after the third card. That would cause people to loosen up more on their first two cards.
So take your example of a 1 big bet, where normally you'd bet .50 before the flop and on the flop, and 1 on the turn and river: Make your game a .25-.50-1 game. Now you get your first two cards, with one showing. But all you have to bet is .25 to see the third card. This would open up the range of hands people could play, and make it less easy to read each other’s hands. To make it even looser, require a .10 or .25 ante to build a pot. That will loosen up hands even more.
That’s interesting. Community card games make it harder to run down other players who are ahead, because everyone shares the community cards. In this case, you’ve moved the strategy to somewhere between a community game and something like 7-card stud. That might be cool.
In general, it will be easier to read hands before the flop, and adding a betting round always benefits the players who can take advantage of the extra information. I’m thinking that this game will widen the gap between the good players and the bad ones, as the bad ones will be more tempted to ‘chase’ with poor odds, and the good players will be able to figure that out. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing for a game with friends where no one is a real pro at poker and the money is small.
But you should always be wary of changing the rules of a poker game when good players are playing with weaker ones and there’s real money involved. Sometimes even small changes in structure can cause radical changes in proper strategy, and the good players will figure that strategy out and clean up on everyone else.
This is a problem with Omaha Hi-lo, for example. And Omaha Hi, for that matter. The problem with Omaha Hi-Lo is that bad players will get cleaned out quickly by the good ones, and conversely if everyone at the table is even moderately good, no one can make any money.
Texas Holdem remains popular because it balances luck with skill in a way that makes it profitable for good players, while retaining enough variance that weaker players can still win on luck for reasonable periods of time. Other games that have come and gone often die because they don’t achieve quite the right balance, and therefore become unstable in terms of maintaining the interest of a wide variety of players of varying skill levels.