[King of Queens]
I’ve got 5 aces and I don’t have an ace in my hand
[/King of Queens]
Hmm, good question. What’s the over/under?
Rounders got a lot of people interested in hold’em, but the key to the explosion of televised poker was the use of small “lipstick cameras” that reveal players’ hands to the audience. ESPN had shown tournaments before, but they never attracted many viewers since it was hard to tell who was doing what and why. There was no drama, just guys pushing chips around. Someone (Jim McManus? Puggy Pearson?) likened the experience to watching bears hibernate and smoke. The innovation of visible hole cards added an element of dramatic irony that made it possible for a huge section of the public who had never played tournament poker to get excited about the game.
The boom in the popularity of poker is due to two main factors:
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The boom in non-Vegas gaming. Poker has simply become much more accessible in the last ten years or so.
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Internet gambling. This is huge. Pokerpulse.com says that in December there were 1.6 million real money players who played online. That is a lot of money players. God knows how many are playing in the free games, but I’d guess it’s at least two or three times that number. That’s a lot of active poker players.
Add those two factors together, and you’ve got a sizeable population that didn’t exist a decade earlier.
When I was younger, poker games were played with pennies, with the players only vaguely aware of the rules. Actual serious money games with serious rules were rare, or confined to quasi-legal gambling clubs that had a few hundred members at most.
Poker’s a great game. Once it became accessible, people flocked to it.
I’m not sure if Rounders, really had that great an impact on poker’s popularity. The movie came out in 98, and I don’t think the the hold’em explosion really took off until 2003. I’m putting my money on a combination of 3 factors:
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As mentioned by Sam Stone, the rise of internet gambling sites has made the game acceccible to millions of people who would never have stepped foot in a gaming room previously.
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For some reason ESPN decided to really promote the 2003 WSOP. Watching this series was what got me hooked. Apparently a lot of other people got hooked watching that broadcast as well. From 2002 to 2003 the number of entries into the WSOP main event rose by over 200 from 631 to 839. However the rise between 2003 and 2004 was astronomical by comparision. In 2004 there were 2576 entries in the main event.
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But it wasn’t just ESPN’s coverage that created the boom. I think a lot of it had to do with who won in 2003. Chris Moneymaker was, by all acoounts, just some random amateur player who won his seat to the tourney in a low stakes online event. His Cinderella story instantly transformed the game into what it has become today. Millions of people have taken up the game in hopes of becoming the next Moneymaker (pun unavoidable).
wrenchslinger
(anyone got a spare $10,000 lying around? I swear my game’s getting pretty good)
Go win a satelite if your game’s that good.
Not mentioned yet is the World Poker Tour, which IIRC debuted early in 2003. The Travel Channel, aka The Vegas Channel, has been promoting WPT along with a number of other gambling-related shows and specials for several years.
I just gotta ask:
What’s the deal with Texas Hold’em anyway?
I heard of the game several years back, before this stuff was even televised, because it’s what they played in all the poker tournaments. I used to play dealer’s choice in a low-stakes game with a bunch of guys from work, and would call Texas Hold’em from time to time. But those hands were over before you knew it and just weren’t very interesting at all.
Clearly we were amateurs at the game and didn’t know the nuances, but what is it about that particular form of poker that it has been the game of choice in tournaments for years and is now so successful on TV?
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Texas Hold 'Em doesn’t really work well in a dealer’s choice type set-up. You can’t just play one or two hands of hold 'em. That kind of takes away from the fun of it all, because in most (well-played) hold 'em deals, only two or three players stay in to the flop.
What I like about hold 'em is that it’s a particularly skillful game, it’s relatively easy to work out hand percentages in your head, you have a lot of information on players cards (since you have 5 community cards), you have the psychological leverage of the all-in (if you’re playing this way. I suck at pot limit hold 'em.) When I start playing games like Omaha hold 'em, or 7 card stud, or 5 card draw, I have great difficulty crunching the numbers and reading the players. For me, I like hold 'em because there’s much more information available to you and it’s much easier to get a bearing on how good your hand is. And, like I said, with no limit you have excellent leverage to bluff and drive people out of the hand. I just find it a game where skillful play and reading players well pays off more consistently than in other poker games.
Games with community cards worked better on TV before hole card cameras because people watching could see some of the cards. Imagine watching 5-card draw on TV. Death!
There are tournaments for other games, they just don’t make it on TV very often. The 2004 WSOP TV coverage included Omaha, Omaha hi-lo, 7-card stud 7-stud hi-lo, Razz and (as a gag) Blind Man’s Bluff.
Here’s the schedule for the 2005 event.
Personally I’d love to see more coverage of Omaha. I love the game but I’m terrible at it.
Omaha high is my favorite game. Any questions about it?
Yeah, sort of–is there anywhere on the 'net where there’s a decent low-level Omaha or Omaha hi/lo (8’s) game? The local casino here in Niagara Falls just started offering Omaha tournaments, and I’d like to try one one day, but I’d like a bit of practice first.
It’s very difficult to find Omaha high games any more. Party Poker usually has one or two low limit Omaha high games. Omaha split is much more common. Most of the online poker places have Omaha split games, at least some of the time.
It’s my understanding that, if playing with wildcards, a “natural” beats an equal hand made up with wild cards. For example, if 2’s are wild, an AAKQ3 beats an AKQ32 (I couldn’t think of anyway to illustrate this with a full house or 2 pair. Could be the beer, or it could be impossible.) (On preview [Is that Annie Duke?], I guess it depends on the house rules.)
I believe that “X over Y” and “X full of Y” mean the same thing. On the other hand, “X’s and Y’s” means 2 pair. (Anecdote: During a friendly poker game, I won a hand with a full house of lower cards, beating my friends 2 pair of higher cards. I showed my cards and triumphantly announced “7’s and 6’s!” [I don’t remember exactly what they were.] My friend showed his 2 pair of high cards, and started raking the chips. I said “Whoa! I won!” He looked at my cards, and then got really pissed. He said that I had stated that I had 2 pair, and therefore I conceded. Cooler heads prevailed, and I got my pot. Later (a few days later) he apologized, because the ultimate rule is “the cards speak for themselves.”
Paradise Poker usually has pot limit Omaha High games going and occasionally fixed limit.
Haj
You know my cousin Annie? 
[sub]Let’s see if I can string him along, folks…[/sub]
As for “natural” hands beating wild-card hands, I have no problem with that myself. But there’s no “official” guidelines to say so.
Straight high or high-low? I’ve only played high a few times and I know pretty much nothing about it. High-low is an incredibly low variance game. Most novices think high-low is a crapshootl, but if you’re very selective on your starting hands you’re all but guarenteed to win even with no other skills. One problem is that it’s very boring since you’ll only be seeing about three hands an hour (other than your blinds). Also, if you have the misfortune of being at a table with decent players, there is pretty much no action at all.
I highly recommend Ray Zee’s High Low Split Poker for Advanced Players. (Scroll down, it’s about 1/3 the way down). It covers both Omaha and stud H/L 8. Their Turbo Omaha H/L software is really good at teaching starting hand strategy. They used to have a 25 hand demo, but I can’t seem to find it.
Here’s an link to an Omaha point count system that’s pretty good.
I used to supplement my income by playing Omaha H/L. Now that a have a good paying job and don’t need the money, Omaha just seems like work.
What? Me hijack?
[hijack] Anyone interested in joining the “Online Texas hold 'em tournaments for Dopers only” league, see this thread. [/hijack]
as a social game holdem sucks, because big hands come rarely (or you need to scale down what you view a big hand is) and you need to play no limit bets to make it exciting. Great for bluffers, but you can clean out and lose your friends in one hand.
Socially limit Hi-Lo games make more sense, as more people can be in each round (2,3,5,7 - what a great hand, I’m in) and your money lasts longer
I’ve always heard that the wild card would be used as the highest card not already in the hand. So the hand with the wild in your scenario would win, but Ac Kc 9c 8c 5c would tie As 9s 8s 5s 2h because the 2h would be played as Ks.
I’m a big fan of the Poker School Online site. For a monthly (or annual) fee you have access to all of the resources of the school, and a starting “bankroll” of $200 school money. The level of play is much better than you’ll find playing the low limit fishponds at most other sites. My game has improved a lot since I began playing (and studying) there.
wrenchslinger
Hey Otto, lighten up.
Hey Wrenchslinger, learn to recognize humor online without smilies