The Poker Chronicles: Rotating

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March 3, 2008

Rotating

I remember when I first learned of their existence and started playing a bit. It was a couple years into my stint as a professional poker player. Up until that point, the only non-hold'em games spread at reasonable stakes were O8 or Stud 8, and I never cared too much for either. (I've since come to at least like Stud 8, if not love it, but O8 still puts me to sleep.) Eventually as poker gained in popularity the long tail effect took hold and you started seeing crazy stuff like Chinese Poker, Badugi, and Triple Draw join mixes. Staid old HORSE tables were replaced with wilder rotations.

I asked Daniel Negreanu for some pointers on 2-7 while we were both on break from a limit hold'em tournament at Bellagio (the one David Williams one, which I know I talked about here long ago) and he told me to read his section in Super System 2 once it came out, and that after I did so I'd be better than almost everyone. A few months later the book was released and I read up, then started playing those games whenever possible, mostly with friends. What Daniel had said proved to be true, the section was brief, to the point, and maybe not flawless (I don't know enough to say for sure) but definitely very accurate. I found myself quickly killing the few TD games I could find.

The problem, of course, is that there is more than one copy of that book in print, and it didn't take long for everyone else to read it as well. No longer could you just sit in a $30/$60 game on Ultimate Bet full of donkeys, because they all paid for their $15 lesson too. And that's when the game really got fun.

All forms of poker have one thing in common, which is that at the lowest levels, it's all about executing a fairly simple plan. It doesn't take a smart person very long to learn to beat a $3/$6 hold'em table if they work at it a bit. It quickly becomes boring and mechanical, but it is also relatively profitable. In fact, you'll never make a higher big bet per hour rate than you will at those kinds of games.

In 2-7, the edge over a sucker seems to be even bigger than in hold'em because the game is, on many levels, more involved. So you can really tear people up if they don't understand the fundamental principles, which are a little different and more complex, and therefore harder to figure out on your own. You see new players calling a raise and drawing 3 all the time, or limping in early and drawing to what you later find out was something like 78. Those people are simply confused by the amount of options and have no chance in hell. It's easier for a novice hold'em player to get lucky and win against skilled competition than a triple draw one.

But when you move up to limits where everyone has a good fundamental understanding, at any variant, it becomes a whole new game. And that's where 2-7 really shines. The game is much more creative than others because you have less concrete information, but more abstract. Unlike hold'em, in which you see 5 of your opponents' 7 cards, a 2-7 player might have 10 or more cards pass through his hand and you never see any of them. In hold'em, the only abstract information is your opponent's betting pattern. In 2-7, you have both that and their draws.

In 2-7, a player can stand with a hand that they should draw to in order to represent a made hand. This becomes even more relevant in a game like Badugi where it is hard to even hit a made hand, and is why I think that that is, in fact, the ultimate poker game. Thus there's nothing in poker more fun than playing rotation games, as far as I'm concerned.

So back to last night. We decided to play a little low stakes rotation, and we ended up doing a little $4/$8 at the Wynn. We ended up playing Badugi, Omaha High, Triple Draw, Hold'em, Stud Eight, Razz, which we called BATHER. Apparently since O usually represents O8, Omaha High is often denoted with an A.

I got into an interesting conversation with a floor guy, who clearly didn't understand my point. Regulations here apparently state that games cannot be spread privately, they must be open to all to join. That's why Andy Beal and his opponents started playing at such ridiculous stakes. He wanted to play heads up, and the only way to ensure that was to play so high that nobody could afford to just horn in on the game.

But, at the same time, the house is required to set a limit on the number of players at one table. This is obvious, as the rules of hold'em would only even allow 22 players to play (44 hole cards, 5 board, 3 burn). Hold'em tables in casinos never accommodate more than 10 though, due to size limitations and the fact that no sane person would play at a 22 man table. So clearly a casino is allowed to set a limit as to how many players can play at a table. They have to.

So my question was "could a casino spread a heads up table?" The table wouldn't be private per se. It would have a list just like any other, and when one player got up, the next on the list could join. The only difference is that unlike normal tables, which typically have a maximum player limit between eight and ten, this one would have a maximum player limit of two.

The floor man clearly didn't understand what I was getting at. I tried rephrasing it as "is there a law that sets the lowest maximum number of players at a table?" but as soon as the words left my mouth I knew they were pointless. I am curious about the answer though. The reason I asked is that mixed games are normally spread 8 handed, but with 2-7 triple draw only 6 players play at a time, which means that two players have to sit out each hand. That's incredibly annoying for me, since I just want to have fun and play draw games. Our table was an unadvertised one spread just for us, but there was a list for a $4/$8 rotation game before we even got there, and since we were already at 6 (two passers-by joined very quickly) we didn’t want any more players to sit down.

My guess is that the casino could technically do that, but they're far more concerned about pissing off regulators than they are pleasing the people who want to play heads up so they won't. Whatever they could rake from heads up games isn't going to move their bottom line enough to risk it.

Today I went over to Bellagio to see if they had any rotation games going. They used to have a great $40/$80 one that featured TD, Stud Hi-Lo Regular (no 8 or better qualifier), Omaha 8, and sometimes Badugi. The floor person told me that all they had was $100/$200 HORSE, but that someone else had just asked about the same game and maybe if we both wanted she could start it. I asked who, and she pointed to my left. It turned out to be Greg Raymer, who was standing right beside me. I figured that he probably wasn't the mark I was looking for, and that I'd be better off trying again tomorrow.

Posted by themaroon at March 3, 2008 5:07 AM

Last night after dinner, the four of us decided it would be fun to play a rotation game. I generally prefer to play those these days, as it makes the game more interesting and I think the draw triple-draw games have a lot more depth to them than hold'em. I remember when I first learned of their existence and started playing a bit. It was a couple years into my stint as a professional poker player. Up until that point, the only non-hold'em games spread at reasonable stakes were O8 or Stud 8, and I never cared too much for either. (I've since come to at least like Stud 8, if not love it, but O8 still puts me to sleep.) Eventually as poker gained in popularity the long tail effect took hold and you started seeing crazy stuff like Chinese Poker, Badugi, and Triple Draw join mixes. Staid old HORSE tables were replaced with wilder rotations. I asked Daniel Negreanu for some pointers on 2-7 while we were both on break from a limit hold'em tournament at Bellagio (the one David Williams one, which I know I talked about here long ago) and he told me to read his section in Super System 2 once it came out, and that after I did so I'd be better than almost everyone. A few months later the book was released and I read up, then started playing those games whenever possible, mostly with friends. What Daniel had said proved to be true, the section was brief, to the point, and maybe not flawless (I don't know enough to say for sure) but definitely very accurate. I found myself quickly killing the few TD games I could find. The problem, of course, is that there is more than one copy of that book in print, and it didn't take long for everyone else to read it as well. No longer could you just sit in a $30/$60 game on Ultimate Bet full of donkeys, because they all paid for their $15 lesson too. And that's when the game really got fun. All forms of poker have one thing in common, which is that at the lowest levels, it's all about executing a fairly simple plan. It doesn't take a smart person very long to learn to beat a $3/$6 hold'em table if they work at it a bit. It quickly becomes boring and mechanical, but it is also relatively profitable. In fact, you'll never make a higher big bet per hour rate than you will at those kinds of games. In 2-7, the edge over a sucker seems to be even bigger than in hold'em because the game is, on many levels, more involved. So you can really tear people up if they don't understand the fundamental principles, which are a little different and more complex, and therefore harder to figure out on your own. You see new players calling a raise and drawing 3 all the time, or limping in early and drawing to what you later find out was something like 78. Those people are simply confused by the amount of options and have no chance in hell. It's easier for a novice hold'em player to get lucky and win against skilled competition than a triple draw one. But when you move up to limits where everyone has a good fundamental understanding, at any variant, it becomes a whole new game. And that's where 2-7 really shines. The game is much more creative than others because you have less concrete information, but more abstract. Unlike hold'em, in which you see 5 of your opponents' 7 cards, a 2-7 player might have 10 or more cards pass through his hand and you never see any of them. In hold'em, the only abstract information is your opponent's betting pattern. In 2-7, you have both that and their draws. In 2-7, a player can stand with a hand that they should draw to in order to represent a made hand. This becomes even more relevant in a game like Badugi where it is hard to even hit a made hand, and is why I think that that is, in fact, the ultimate poker game. Thus there's nothing in poker more fun than playing rotation games, as far as I'm concerned. So back to last night. We decided to play a little low stakes rotation, and we ended up doing a little $4/$8 at the Wynn. We ended up playing Badugi, Omaha High, Triple Draw, Hold'em, Stud Eight, Razz, which we called BATHER. Apparently since O usually represents O8, Omaha High is often denoted with an A. I got into an interesting conversation with a floor guy, who clearly didn't understand my point. Regulations here apparently state that games cannot be spread privately, they must be open to all to join. That's why Andy Beal and his opponents started playing at such ridiculous stakes. He wanted to play heads up, and the only way to ensure that was to play so high that nobody could afford to just horn in on the game. But, at the same time, the house is required to set a limit on the number of players at one table. This is obvious, as the rules of hold'em would only even allow 22 players to play (44 hole cards, 5 board, 3 burn). Hold'em tables in casinos never accommodate more than 10 though, due to size limitations and the fact that no sane person would play at a 22 man table. So clearly a casino is allowed to set a limit as to how many players can play at a table. They have to. So my question was "could a casino spread a heads up table?" The table wouldn't be private per se. It would have a list just like any other, and when one player got up, the next on the list could join. The only difference is that unlike normal tables, which typically have a maximum player limit between eight and ten, this one would have a maximum player limit of two. The floor man clearly didn't understand what I was getting at. I tried rephrasing it as "is there a law that sets the lowest maximum number of players at a table?" but as soon as the words left my mouth I knew they were pointless. I am curious about the answer though. The reason I asked is that mixed games are normally spread 8 handed, but with 2-7 triple draw only 6 players play at a time, which means that two players have to sit out each hand. That's incredibly annoying for me, since I just want to have fun and play draw games. Our table was an unadvertised one spread just for us, but there was a list for a $4/$8 rotation game before we even got there, and since we were already at 6 (two passers-by joined very quickly) we didn’t want any more players to sit down. My guess is that the casino could technically do that, but they're far more concerned about pissing off regulators than they are pleasing the people who want to play heads up so they won't. Whatever they could rake from heads up games isn't going to move their bottom line enough to risk it. Today I went over to Bellagio to see if they had any rotation games going. They used to have a great $40/$80 one that featured TD, Stud Hi-Lo Regular (no 8 or better qualifier), Omaha 8, and sometimes Badugi. The floor person told me that all they had was $100/$200 HORSE, but that someone else had just asked about the same game and maybe if we both wanted she could start it. I asked who, and she pointed to my left. It turned out to be Greg Raymer, who was standing right beside me. I figured that he probably wasn't the mark I was looking for, and that I'd be better off trying again tomorrow.

The Poker Chronicles

Busting Chumps and Taking Names.

March 3, 2008

Rotating