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 he Guardian G2 Poker Column |
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| Victoria
Coren |
| Monday January 29,
2007 |
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Regular readers might remember me crooning to you, last November:
"When you read, you begin with A, B, C; when you sing, you begin with do, re,
mi . . ."
Since then, we have been trilling through the do-re-mi of
poker: the building blocks of all variants. We have looked at draw games, stud
games and flop games. We have fleshed out the difference between hold 'em and
Omaha. Last week, we dealt with razz, in which the worst hand wins the pot,
ignoring straights and flushes, with aces as the lowest card, so the lowest and
therefore best hand would be A-2-3-4-5, then A-2-3-4-6, and so on. |
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And what do you do, once you know your
do-re-mi? You blend them together to make beautiful music. If you mix regular
seven-card stud with razz, you create the sweet sound of seven-card high/low
split. It does exactly what it says on the tin: splits the pot between the
highest and lowest hands.
You need only know three new things to play
high-low split. First: aces are now both the highest and the lowest cards in
the deck. Second: you can play five of your cards for the high hand, and a
different five for the low hand. Third: this game is also known as seven-card
stud eight or better. That's because, in a split-pot game, all five cards in
your low hand must be lower than nine (no pairs). If your seven cards are, for
example, A-A-2-2-4-6-7, then you might win the low half of the pot with
A-2-4-6-7 (a "seven low"), and the high half with A-A-2-2-7 (two pairs). But if
you're holding A-A-2-2-4-6-J, then you cannot make a low hand at all, and can
win only half the pot.
Why will this make for terrific action in your
home game? Because with so many cards, and two ways to win, everybody gambles.
But you know a secret . . . or you will, if you tune in next week.
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