Just thought this might make for an interesting twist... Play is the same as NLHE, except the window card is shown preflop. So it's:

Preflop: 2 hole cards, plus 1 community card dealt
Flop: 2 community cards
Turn/River: 1 community card each.

Any thoughts on what this game might be like? I don't think it would necessarily change the amount of action, but I think ranges would become somewhat more complex (since now there are 13 possible groupings of preflop ranges depending on the window card) and this change would benefit better players and good hand-readers.

Set-mining would be greatly reduced in value. If there's an ace in the window, probably best not to call a preflop raise with KK. But KTs with the same suit as the ace would be worth a call I think, and maybe 52s in late position... On an 8c window, I think Ac8h would be slightly better than Ah8h.. Anyway, there would be lots of stuff to think about.

I think you're thinking a little too much about it lol

What you have here is a community-card variation of seven-card stud (actually stud with a two-card flip). In order to be playable, it needs a stripped deck, usually of 32 cards, because otherwise it is too difficult for more than one player to connect with the first community-card.

The original version is called Manila, or sevens-up, and it was the most popular fixed-limits game in Australia and also I think, New Zealand and some other south-pacific nations, pre-holdem: it was the only fixed-limits game with any significant following in Australia. Manila is dealt over five rounds, without the two-card flip, ie, start with one community-card and two hole-cards, then deal the rest of the community-card cards one-by one. The layout you have described might be called "manila with a two-card flip" and is a modernized version which I've suggested, but which no has taken up, as everyone has switched to holdem anyway. .


Both the original five-round game of Manila, and the four-round version with a two-card flip (which your layout re-discovers)work best for fixed-limits, and Manila was never played with PL or NL betting, and rarely with even-half-pot. Manila fans usually preferred to play the game with a full table of twelve players using fixed-limits.

Just found that this game (with the stripped deck as in Manila) is called Pinatubo. I still think it would be playable, interesting, and enjoyable without a stripped deck. Maybe a lot of hands would just fold around preflop to a single raise, but those that go further would tend to be pretty interesting.

Heh, I called it pinatubo not long after I invented it, because Mt Pinatubo is a volcano near Manila, Phillipines. But I now refer to it as "manila with a two-card flip" fwiw. The 32-card deck is an acquired taste, but it's a fast and exciting FL game. Played with a full deck.... I'm not so sure.

With apologies to the OP, but I'd like to shout out to Rusty here, because this is a thread which features the two-card flip, and the 3-2-1-1 structure, which I have not started myself.

IMO, it shows how poker evolution proceeds: it isn't random, but it also isn't systematic. Today, no one would invent a game like 7cs, with a one-card draw at the second round, because from a modern player's POV, the door-card is simply the first card of the flop, and the natural thing to do is to complete the flop at the second round, by dealing two cards.

So if Stud didn't exist, and was invented for the first time today, it would be dealt in the 3-2-1-1 pattern rediscoverd by the OP, and with the river dealt face-up, because it would be based on how poker is played today. That's why I am adamant that the 3-2-1-1 layout is how modern Stud should be played, because that's how it would be dealt if it was invented using modern principles.

When stud was first invented it derived from, or converged on, the highly popular Blackjack/Pontoon layout, and so the one-card blackjack draw was used instead of a multi-card draw. It's an anachronism which has resulted in Stud having no significant role to play in the modern market, and it will remain economically irrelevant until its fixed, which incidentally, also makes it an excellent no-limit game.

I'm a few thousand richer than I was this morning fwiw...

Well, good news for the economy there. I'm referring to the small market share of a once dominant game, and how it can be increased. I'm sure you will do very well when that happens. You are welcome to discuss it on another thread if you are interested.

A big bet stud variant will change stud about as much as KC Lowball changes 2-7.

Stud and stud variants still probably make up the biggest percentage of the live limit poker market. Basically the same as it used to. If people want to play big bet take their money at nlhe and plo. If people want to play limit stud is still an exceedingly popular choice not a broken game.

It's like looking to add a twist to straight pool because 9-ball is (was) popular. It is what it is. Games are profitable then they're not. Played here then there. Go out of style then come back. So many examples it's not even worth mentioning. That billiards analogy is a decent summation though.

We've hijacked the OP's thread here, but it is related to the merits of the 3-2-1-1 layout he has suggested, but as a form of Stud rather than with community cards.

What you have said about Stud's popularity is contradicted by Bryan Clark's current survey of LV card rooms in the 2p2 magazine.http://www.twoplustwo.com/magazine/i...ummer-2012.php
Stud is not mentioned once, and if it is played at all, it is in some of the few mixed-games which are being spread, so it's not "an exceedingly popular choice" at all: it's share of the LV market is too small to even register. And fixed-limits generally is a small part of the live market today, even in the US, which has always been more interested in FL than the rest of the world. So it has an almost invisibly small share of the small share of the market which is currently devoted to playing FL. Maybe it would show up in a survey of AC or LA cardrooms, but in LV today you apparently cannot get a game.

If you can please give one example of a poker game that has gone out of style and then returned to having, say, a 5% market share, then go ahead. If you look you will find that obsolescence is a one-way street, and there is no J-curve involved: According to John Scarne writing in 1970, Stud accounted for about 70% of the market, and it was often the only game on offer in small card rooms. In economic terms, dropping from that to less than 1%, is beyond being broken.

How many fixed limit games are listed, that was the point of the qualifier. Also, LV poker rooms are far from comprehensive. Of the live limit poker that gets played stud is way up there in popularity. It's not the most popular in every room, city, and region but it's got a big share of the limit market. It had a decent share of the online market when you consider how many strikes it has going against it that are online specific.

I'll list draw poker as a game that was pretty much flat dead and then became very popular again, and this is just its very recent history. There was a day a few years ago where it would be hard to make a dime off that game and then a day a few years after that where some of the biggest winners out there were playing mostly draw.

Your thing about 70% to 1% is really pretty simple. NLHE got huge on tv and all the recreational players suddenly became willing to play it. The rooms spread it for them and let them go broke because they had to. You can also say limit hold em died, is it broken too? Again, nobody wanted to change the rules of 1-pocket when some movie about 9-ball got made. They just took the suckers' money at 9-ball until it dried up and then went back to the other games.

The main part is also that a stud/hold em off-shoot isn't going to do anything for the poker economy. You shouldn't even compare it to stud compare it to nlhe. Are those players going to prefer it to nlhe? If not it's not going to change any of those %'s you seem to think matter so much. Hold em for people who don't like hold em, stud for people who don't like stud is still the way I look at it. And yes, of course I'd play it if it was the way to get the money, I'm not the guy you have to sell. You either have to sell new players, stud players who have quit rather than try to play stud, or hold em players (etc.). Which group does this game appeal to? Selling it to the stud players, that make up that 1% of the market or whatever, doesn't do anything.

What about a cross between Omaha and Holdem, make a NL (or PL?) variant with 3cards dealt

Would be awesome

I guess

You could be right: the game already exists and is called courchevel. http://www.pokerplayer.co.uk/poker-s..._strategy.html

Wheeldraw: the potential market for a non-fixed-limits stud game is much larger, because most players don't like FL, especially outside the US. So the target market is not those who currently favor Stud, it's the much larger number of players who won't play it in it's current FL-only form.

Limit Holdem is probably 20+ times as popular as Stud, so it's far from irrelevant. But I think that it will never again overtake the NL game: the dominance of FL has been permanently broken, and those in the South, especially Texas, as well as most of the rest of the world outside the US, who always regarded it as inferior, have won the argument. The boom would have been much smaller if not for NL betting, and those who can't see that are blinded by their love of FL, as well as the general perception that Poker is a game of fashions.

I take your point that games like Draw are not completely gone, but that's very different from being a significant part of the market. Over 95% (as a first approximation) of the serious poker ever played has been with just five high-poker layouts, ie Draw, 5cs, 7cs, holdem and omaha. Where fashions exist in Poker, they exist in that few percent of the market not devoted to mainstream games, and when the mainstream changes it's due to technical changes and improvements, not passing fashions and fads, and the old games become permanently sidelined. There is no J-curve involved, though a game might level off at <0.1%, like Draw today.

Sounds like a really fun game. I think standard omaha or pineapple (and other 3-hole card variants) could work well in this format as well.

Anyway, here are my thoughts:
Edges in deep stacked big bet games are largely derived from superior river play. The best play at the river will use information gathered from all previous streets of betting. Showing a preview card would do a lot to improve the quality of information ascertained from the first betting round. Better players would be much better at utilizing this information.

If we're talking live poker I don't think there's any chance in the world limit hold em is 20x's that of stud especially if you throw out the stakes where nobody can win. I think more significant hands of live stud are dealt than live lhe but obviously don't have comprehensive information.

Online stud has some specific disadvantages I'll admit to that. Unfortunately stud w/ a flip would share most of those disadvantages.

HI Wheel draw. let's continue this on the stud page, if at all. The OP has something going here. http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/20...iving-1232918/