A thought experiment struck me, and I am not sure if I'm thinking about it correctly.

A new poker game has quickly risen in popularity - Texas Loose'em NL. The rules are similar to Texas Hold'em NL, only that the objective is to loose your starting stack of 10 000 as quickly as possible.

What would be optimal strategy for such a game?

7 2o all in

Any bet or raise is met by an automatic fold from the other player. So the game never gets off the ground. The small blind simply folds every hand, and even if the game had even blinds the player first to act simply open-folds every hand. If you go allin with 72o, or any other hand the other player simply folds and then you win a blind, which is bad for you.

Calling/raising pre would be about equivalent to auto-folding pre in regular holdem.

sitting out

I don't play live, but what happens if you open jam for $10k UTG and then push your cards into the bottom of the muck? Does the BB win the pot?

2nd UTG wins it if its me, that is if he mucked his hand as soon as he bet and before I act. First guy who says call wins the pot ... unless ... you know what, there is a serious group one hand around the back somewhere to overcall.

Oh, we are trying to lose our chips? Never mind.

If we assume that is not possible fold without bet for example ''we are BB and are a limp'' or '' we play IP a flop and we can't openfold '' probably best strategy is LIMP every time and x/f every time, correct?

This would be true if the objective of the game was to have the most negative bb/100 winrate. However, the objective of the game is to lose your starting stack of 10 000 as quickly as possible. The wording makes it a bit ambigious, but I interpret this as a sort of "loser takes it all tournament" (or potentially like a reversed tournament, where 1st player to bust wins the most, 2nd gets less, 3rd gets less than that again, etc.). If thats the case, you would be as good as guaranteed to not lose the quickest (or quick enough to get into the money) by autofolding every hand. In such a tournament, correct play would probably be for every player to just get it in preflop in the first hand (maybe there are some fringe scenarios where a player can get away from aces, if the payoutstructure warrants it).

Got a smart one right here ♤

That's the same way I interpreted it but I was thinking HU not a multi-player tourney. For heads up, if your opponent is folding every hand there is no way to increase your expectation by putting more money in. Also, if your opponent is shoving every hand you can exploit them by folding every hand. So folding every hand is the optimal solution and calling or raising is clearly not.

For multiple players things are more complicated and interesting. Still, if all players are folding every hand, no *single* player can increase their expectation by putting more money in. So it qualifies as a Nash equilibrium. However, unlike HU, if some players are raising we can no longer necessarily exploit them by folding every hand. If everyone at the table is shoving, no *single* player can increase their expectation by folding, so we're also at a Nash equilibrium (there are multiple solutions).

If it isn't clear why shoving UTG isn't automatically good, think of when you're at a table with 9 colluders. They can all fold which basically blinds you up. Even winning just one blind is disastrous, because once everyone else does decide to go allin, the chance you get eliminated first is basically 0 since your stack will have something left. Everyone else at the table can increase their chances of winning the tourney from ~1/10 to ~1/9 at your expense.

Of course, collectively exploiting a folder is a lot more obvious and straightforward. If this game were actually offered down the street of course I'm allin ASAP. The chance the other 9 players are scheming against me is a lot less likely than not. Still, I would be shoving knowing that I'm not mathematically guaranteed any kind of decent EV.

I like this idea! How about if we mix up and have 'negative' blinds/ antes so folding is more costly?

I like the creative use of the rules, but I don't think BB would be automatically entitled to your 10k. The player would have to call otherwise I would think you would still win the blinds though your hand is normally considered dead.

At the very best I would think the money would be returned and the hand played all over again.

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It is true that colluding opponents can **** over a player who opts to use the "openshove-any-two" strategy, but that is the case with multiplayer nash equilibrium in general.

Lets say Im UTG, 9-handed in a tournament which payes the first two losers. I openjam any two. It folds around to the Big Blind. Before he has looked at his cards, he already knows that he is being offered, on the spot, to win the tournament 50% of the time (neglecting chops). This offer is so much more valueble than to collectively ****ing over one out of the 9 players. The Big Blind should almost always call here (maybe always?). So he ends up calling, and I win the tournament. Scratch that, lets be more realistic. He wins the tournament. We end up playing again. This time, I openshove UTG again, and UTG+1 calls. He has realized that if he doesnt, the players behind will, and his chances of finishing in the top two spots will be almost non-existent. So everybody ends up calling, and we flip for it in the first hand.

What ends up happening is that folding will be a very rare thing at equilibrium in this game. If you fold, you give the opponents the chance to flip for the win. And that hurts your EV to such a tremendous degree.

This game would be cooler if we made it pot limit Loose'em. That way you get two people in the hand raising back and forth wondering who's gonna fold first. The goal would be to build big pots and fold before your opponent does. That way there is incentive to play. Those who sit out every hand will always lose, because the risk takers will either perform horribly or very well. You can never finish in the money if you play it safe.

Getting short stacked could be a problem. People won't want to give you the chance to win it so they won't gamble with you. you'd need to find someone with the same stack size within a big blind away in stack size that would be willing to gamble their whole stack. If the smaller stack loses then they win. If the larger stack loses then the BB will be forced to play with him since he'll be below a BB. This also could encourage others to call to make the chances of him winning less likely.

Now that you're not allowed to go all-in preflop you'll never know if your opponent decides to raise a bunch and then be a dick and fold AA.

The best hand in this type of game would be 32o. A lot of other people are going to be playing low cards like 2x, 3x, and 4x. You want them to have blockers to your hand. A hand like 72o might win as 7 high. That certainly wouldn't be good.