Short deck poker - the new obsession of professionals

Short deck poker - the new obsession of professionals

Worldwide, Texas Hold'em is the most familiar and popular version of poker. Millions of players practice it daily. Both live and online. In short, they are attracted to the concept of each holding two cards in their hand and having five more on the table for common use. The all-in cards appear in three separate rounds – the flop (three), the turn (one) and the river (one). In a huge number of hands until the last card, the winner is not certain. Players have the opportunity to develop their strategy in a total of four rounds, including the preflop bets (ie before the dealer turns over the first three cards that each player will combine with their own two). This gives a huge variety of strategies and ways of playing. And this makes the game attractive and distributing millions of dollars every hour.

But like any modern creation, Texas Hold'em meets with sought-after options for development and greater attractiveness. One of its new variants has gained wide popularity recently and is becoming something of a new trend among professionals. It's about Short Deck Poker. A quick translation from English (i.e. of the phrase "short deck") will immediately reveal to us what the main innovation of the version is - a more modest deck and a smaller number of cards.

Instead of the usual deck of 52 cards, 36 are used to increase the attractiveness. The new variant of poker is largely gaining popularity in very high level games around the tables in Macau. All cards from 2 to 5 are removed from the deck. Simple math means that with 4 by 4 cards, a total of 16 are removed.

As in Texas Hold'em, aces are the strongest card, but they also enter a straight hand with the lowest. This means that you can win a hand with 5 cards in a row from ace to 9. Traditionally, each player is dealt two cards in the hand and looks for a combination with the five below. Bets are made preflop, flop, turn and river. In general, all the rules match. But the cards are fewer, which makes the possibility of stronger combinations and more dramatic turns higher by a solid percentage.

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