Interesting new hold'em variation, field report (mostly non-grumpy)

The session

I hadn't really planned on playing poker today, because of other things I needed to get done, but I just couldn't resist the lure of being one of the first to play a new version of poker on the day it's initially offered publicly at a casino. (See the immediately preceding post for more details on how the game works: http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2008/01/interesting-new-holdem-variation-non.html.) I'm glad I took advantage of it. I made about $220 in just under five hours, in a game I've never played before ("Royal Hold'em"), and at limits I've never played before ($5-$10; the highest I've previously gone is $4-$8). I don't consider myself a poker savant or anything, but it's reassuring to prove to myself that I have solid enough fundamentals of poker that I can successfully handle a new curve being thrown my way.

I bought in for $150, and almost immediately got up to about $250 with the first two hands I played, both K-Q offsuit (which I would have folded, except for being in the blinds), both making the top full house, and getting paid off by several opponents. As one of the members of the team marketing the game told me just before I left, "It's a game where you hit quads and full boats and actually get paid off!" Absolutely true; in standard hold'em, a common disappointment is that you hit big, and nobody else does, so you make little or no money with your strongest hands. That's not a problem in Royal Hold'em. (I think I'm supposed to insert one of those little "TM" symbols when I write that, but I'm not going to bother. So sue me.)

At this early point in my session there were two completely clueless players donating their chips. Right after I sat down, I overheard one of them ask the dealer, "Are we playing with just one deck?" I think she saw the cards coming out of the autoshuffler, and thought that maybe it worked like blackjack, with multiple decks shuffled together. The other clueless player twice called a bet on the river holding a straight when the board was double-paired, meaning that the person betting into her virtually had to have a full house. Both times, she was genuinely surprised that her straight was not the winner. Sharks, meet the fish.

But soon thereafter the competition stiffened up dramatically. The aforementioned players left after giving away their chips, and were replaced by some of the denizens of http://www.allvegaspoker.com/, the site where I had first read about this game and initial discussions of strategy. Dave, Sabrina, and Michael unquestionably knew at least as much as I did about how to approach the game, and my stack slowly dwindled down to about $100.

They all left after a couple of hours, though, and were replaced by others. One was another guy from AVP, though I didn't recognize his handle (my apologies, sir!), and he was rock-solid. But others who came and went seemed to be passersby who watched for a while, then sat down to try it, and had no idea of strategy. One guy believed that unrelenting aggression was the key, and raised about nine out of ten starting hands--when better strategy would be to fold about that many. He was on the good side of variance at first, hitting quads a few times (which I never did--not even once!), but then, inevitably, the luck ran out and his stack experienced a Seinfeldian shrinkage.

Observations on strategy

Overall, I was surprised that one simple variation in the game could make such an interesting difference in strategy and how the game plays. For one thing, suited versus unsuited hole cards makes essentially no difference, because making flushes (all of which must be royal flushes) is so rare. I didn't see even one in my time at the game tonight.

On the other hand, there is a whole lot of sameness in the hands, because of the narrowly restricted range of cards in play. My sense is that I would get tired of this variation a lot more quickly than when playing with a full deck. There seems to be very little room for creativity and deceptiveness in how one plays.

I came away with a strong impression that there are two keys that will separate winners from losers in the long run: Starting hand selectivity, and willingness to fold a full house when you have evidence that you are beat by a higher full house or four-of-a-kind.

It's a tricky mental adjustment at first. To look down at a suited K-Q or pocket 10s on the button and fold them just seems unnatural. But it's the right thing to do, because by the time five more cards have hit the table, those are far more likely to be underdogs than the best hands.

I also was left with the impression that the river card changes the winner to the loser, and vice-versa, more frequently with the 20-card deck than in standard hold'em. I don't know that that is really so, but it seemed that way to me. I would have to give it a lot more thought and run simulations to see if that's true, which is way more work than I'm willing to put into it, but it is at least an interesting theoretical question.

Problems and suggestions

I had just two gripes. First, see that crown-looking thing in the foreground of the first photo? That's the dealer button they came up with to help set the game apart from Texas Hold'em. Guys, that's pretty darn ugly. Looks like something that came with the kiddie meal at Burger King. You don't need silly gimmicks like that to make this work.

Second, without going into stories and examples, I'll just say that the dealers need to be more assertive about enforcing the rules about one player to a hand and talking about the hand in progress. Because everybody is new to the game, friends and family members of players seem to feel strong urges to give advice. And because boards that would be highly unusual in standard hold'em are commonplace in Royal Hold'em, people at first just can't resist pointing out the straight on the board, the possible royal flushes, and so forth. Dealers really need to politely but firmly drop the Cone of Silence on such chatter.

One problem, of which the http://www.newpoker.com/ folks are acutely aware, is that the Hard Rock dealers are not poker dealers, so lots of things that would be already be automatic for poker dealers adapting to this variant become problems--things like quickly and accurately determining the winning hand, remembering to make change when necessary, etc. But that's not an intrinsic flaw of the game, just a consequence of having its debut at a casino that lacks a cadre of experienced poker dealers.

Problem dealer

I did have a problem with one dealer, Kevin. (Of course, he might report that he had a problem player. I'd disagree, but that's the nature of interpersonal conflicts.)

At one point, only Sabrina (a poker dealer at Treasure Island) and I were left in the hand. I checked on the turn. She attempted to bet her last $8, when the standard full bet would have been $10. For reasons that I couldn't comprehend (and, I think, neither could Sabrina), the dealer wouldn't let her bet that. He seemed to think that if she didn't have the full $10, then she could only bet $5. That was strange, but I was planning to call anyway, so I spoke up with what I thought was an obvious solution. I pushed out $8 and said, "I'll raise to the $8 she has left."

There is not a poker dealer in the city that wouldn't accept that as valid, under the circumstances. But this guy said, "You can't raise just $3; it has to be another $5." I looked at him incredulously and asked, "So you want me to put out $10, then give me $2 change when she calls, rather than having me just put out $8 now?" He said yes, that's how it had to be. Oh well, it got the job done. But then, to put icing on the cake, he didn't give me the change until I reminded him of it.

A bigger problem with the same dealer came up on his next down. A woman two seats to my right announced that she was leaving, just as it would have been her turn to pay the big blind. (That's a common point in the rotation at which players stand up to go.) She was racking up her chips, and the dealer was just staring at her. After 10 or 15 seconds of nothing happening, I asked, "What are we waiting for?" The dealer said, "It's her big blind." OK, so maybe he didn't hear her say she was leaving. She told him that she was done playing. But then, strangely, he continued to just sit there and look at her, as if this messed everything up. I got the distinct impression that he had no idea how to handle this situation--he had that "deer in the headlights" look about him. So I finally spoke up, saying, "If she's leaving, then he [pointing to the guy on my right] becomes the big blind, and we can go."

To my great surprise, this dealer turned to me and said, "Am I dealing this game or are you?" I usually try to either ignore rudeness or respond to it nicely, giving the person a chance to change his approach, rather than escalating conflict. But this was so out of line that I decided to reply in kind. I said, "Neither of us. We're both just sitting here doing nothing."

He asked, "How much have you dealt this game?" Well, none, but that hardly settles the question of who knows what needs to happen here. I did; he apparently didn't. I had tried to point out how to get things going again, and he had snapped at me for it. I think it's the rudest a poker dealer has ever been to me.

But he apparently decided in the end that my solution was good enough, and the game got underway again. Because of his reaction, though, I did something that I have never done before to any dealer, no matter how incompetent and no matter how much I disliked something he or she did: I stiffed him on tips for the remainder of the evening. I didn't feel any perverse pleasure in it, as in "Ha! Take that! You're not getting a dollar from this pot!" I just decided that I really didn't have any other way of communicating how out of line I thought he had been, short of talking to his supervisor, which I didn't feel like taking the trouble to do. (I'm open to other players and dealers piping up in the comments, as to whether that reaction was too much, too little, or about right for the situation. I'm still unsure about it myself.)

Summary

That little unpleasantness aside, however, it was one of the most interesting and engaging poker sessions I've had since moving here. A lot of the decisions I make while playing have become fairly automatic, the result of having faced a similar situation many times before, and "pattern recognition" sets in; I can take a mental shortcut around the step-by-step process of figuring out what an opponent has, and jump right to the action I need to take. But the shortened deck made me think it out from scratch every time: What can I beat, what beats me, and how likely is it that my opponent's hand falls into those two categories? It is the last part of that algorithm that dramatically changes from the usual game.

Oh, and they gave me the "New Poker" hat shown above, which is nice. How could I not like a game when I make money, get my brain stimulated, and end up with a new hat to boot?