Short Deck Poker Rules
Short Deck Hold’em – also known as Six Plus (6+) Hold’em – is No-Limit Hold’em played with a stripped-down deck. All of the deuces to fives are removed to make the total deck just 36 cards. That means some pretty big changes to the poker hand rankings, game dynamics and to standard Texas Holdem strategy. The 50a charts helped me smoothly transition from 100a to 50a Short Deck Poker. I recommend them to anyone who wants to jump into these games as they will give you a good foundation for a winning strategy. Now that you can play short deck with pokerrrr, it’s time to start digging into the strategies of this poker variant so that you can maximize your EV and win those chips. The fact that deuces through fives are missing from the deck changes the odds of hitting various hands, which, as previously discussed, changes the hand ranking a bit as well.
Short-deck poker (a.k.a. Six-plus Hold'em or Triton Poker) is a variant of Texas Hold'em design by Chinese poker players. The rules are similar to Texas Hold'em, but the game differ in a fundamental way: there are 36 cards instead of 52 involved (making 630 starting hands possible instead of 1326).
Plenty of people in the poker community got familiar with this game when it occured in the Triton Super High Roller Series 2018, a cash game guested by big names such as Tom Dwan, Randy Lew, Andrew Robl, Jason Koon and Paul Phua. The fame raise again when the game debuted as an event in WSOP 2019.
Six Plus hold'em being explained
Rules
Compared to the rules of Texas Hold'em, where are a few novelties. The deck consists of 36 cards instead of 52. Since this change the probabilities for some hands, the hand ranking is different:
- Royal straight flush
- Straight flush
- Four of a kind
- Flush
- Full house
- Three of a kind
- Straight
- Two pairs
- Pair
- High cards
What you should focus on is that a flush beat a full house and a three of a kind beat a straight.
The reasons are logical: in a 36-card deck game flushes are less common and straights are more common. Normally, a flush can be constructed from 13 different cards in every suit, in Short-deck poker that is reduced to nine cards per suit. And it is the other way around with straights: since the span have been reduced from 2-A to 6-K, the cards will more often connect (also notice that ace are counted as a five, making a A-9 straight possible).
The new conditions concerning straights and flushes are interested since the straight flush combines these hands.
Tips
So how to adjust to this game compared to Texas Hold'em? First of all, the hands are in average stronger and the difference between a weak and a strong hand are reduced. The consequence is 1) you should play more hands; 2) yoy should not be too confident with hands you usually consider very strong.
Since more players getting less weak hands, there is often more players involved in a hand. Both these factors makes it harder to bluff successfully.
Starting hand strengths also shifts in some cases. Connectors such as QJ, JT and T9 gets very strong. If you are familiar with Omaha, you may recognize this.
You should be ready to invest more with straight draw and less with flush draws compared to Hold'em. Notice, however, that it is plausible to regard the imply odds higher on flushes since they are less common and that they beat a full house.
You should also be somewhat more prepared to meet quads. Not that they are especially common, but they will happen more often than you are use to if Texas Hold'em is your normal game.
Odds
There are new probabilities to study if you going to adopt from Texas Hold'em to Six-Plus Hold'em. Here are the most fundamental situations with the odds involved.
| Situation | Percent |
|---|---|
| Probability of be dealt a pocket pair | 9,6% |
| Probability of flopping a set | 18% |
The probabilities to be dealt pocket pairs and to flop sets goes up.
| Situation | Percent |
|---|---|
| Probability of hitting a flush draw on the turn or river | 30% |
| Probability of hitting an open-ended straight on the turn or river | 46% |
The most conspicuous drawing odds are the huge 46% to hit a open-ended straight on the last streets. The percentage to hit a flush are 5% lower than in Texas Hold'em.
Hand vs hand
As a compliment to the odds for given situations, it’s also important to learn the winning percentage between hands, since there are often different numbers involved compared to classic Hold'em.
Rules Of Short Deck Poker
| Situation | Player 1 | Player 2 |
|---|---|---|
| A-A vs. 8-6s | 70% | 28% |
| A-A vs. 8-8s | 76% | 24% |
| A-Ko vs. J-To | 53% | 47% |
| A-Qo vs. Q-Js | 57% | 38% |
| A-Ts vs. 7-7 | 57% | 42% |
| A-8s vs. T-9s | 48% | 50% |
| T-9o vs. 7-6s | 63% | 33% |
| Q-Js vs. T-T | 54% | 45% |
Short Deck Poker Rules
The percents for possible splits has not been written out.
One of the things to notice is the relative big edge with two suited over cards against a middle pair, but also how good T-9 perform against A-8.
In general, there are minor differences compared to Texas Hold'em. For example, a pair has approximately 5% less winning chance against a lower pair.
There can I play Short-deck poker?
Short Deck Poker Rules
It took a while before the giants, Poker Stars and Party Poker launch Short-deck poker. Poker Stars did so in 2018 and Party Poker in 2019.
888 have not included Short-deck poker yet in the game selection, but it is also available at iPoker network, and therefore you can play this game in sites such as Betfair and Paddy Power.