The OP makes a compelling case for why high poker will always be far more popular than lowball.

maybe this should be the ME instead?

Your soccer/field hockey metaphor only goes so far.

A rule that improves soccer may not improve field hockey. FH and Soccer are different sports with different characteristics. You wouldn't necessarily apply the rule to football or basketball either. You can't blindly say "rule X helped sport Y therefore rule X will help sport Z"

Further, you really do bang this drum kind of a lot. It's almost the only thing I've ever seen you post about or talk about. That kind of single-mindedness demonstrates that perhaps it's not something you see so clearly.

You don't really do any more than handwaving to show that your game is better. I've played it. I've had people play it. It's OK - none of them were racing to switch to your stud with a flip, and that includes both people who like stud games, and people who want the stud rotations to be over so they can get back to badugi (a lowball game everyone loves) and plo8 (a split pot game everyone loves)

Hi Rusty, thanks for the comments: I might just insert something on topic here: We only have a small sample to go on, but when the WSOP has to choose an ME game, and the choice is between the traditional playlist, and a four-round, seven-card no-limit game, with a "draw to five cards at the second round", five-upcards and two hole-cards, which no one has heard of before, what have they done, 100% of the time?

The point is that I'm not suggesting anything new, and the same applies to most of my stuff: there is no invention involved, it's just applying things which are already known to work perfectly, as in the Soccer/FH example.

Cross fertilization of successful ideas between games is by far the biggest source of change in games and whenever a successful new game ingredient is invented competing games usually look at it very carefully, to see if it can work for them too.

So I think you are on the wrong track there in general, and when it comes to poker, well you are talking about a game which is almost entirely made up of borrowed and very old ingredients. The list of borrowed ideas includes poker betting, community cards, spare hole-cards, five-card straights and flushes, the use of seven cards in a five-card game, the discard and draw and the stud layouts. There's not much left of poker if you take those things away!

As an example of game technology (if I may call it that) being widely applicable, consider the case of spare hole-cards, as used in Omaha: the principle is identical to the use of spare/bench players in team sports, because they can be used without changing the basic game, as long as you make sure you don't put spares into play without taking other players off the field. Spare hole-cards were in use in Cribbage for 400 years before being applied to Poker, but once Omaha appeared, they were tried out in every other poker variation, with considerable success, making three-card manila, and six-card draw for instance, not to mention the pineapples, 3-card omaha and others.

But one game they have not been successfully applied to is Stud. Why should that be? The reason seems to be that players don't know how to use them properly, and simply put the extra card into play without restriction, which as we know from team sports, is not how spares work. Since doing that ruins the game, I suspect that players have tried it out, not liked it, and given up on the idea.

I can tell you all sorts of things about why spare hole-cards are just as useful in Stud as in the flop games, but then I would just be shill-ing, and hand waving. But why should anyone doubt (on general principles) that they work in Stud? Of course they do: All you do is deal an extra hole-card to start, with the restriction that you can use only two of them in the final hand (or one,or none, as required, but never all three) and to enforce that rule the river hole-card must be kept separate: if the four hole-cards are mixed, the hand is dead. That's how it's done, and it works very well for razz and hilo, as well as high-only, with or without the two-card flip.

And if I point out that in seven-card hilo, there are not enough cards to actually use the entire ranking system (when you have a full house or quads you can't make a low) what reaction do I get? Anything at all except "Hey, good point. I might try that." But it means the game is not doing what it promises, and not matching Omaha-8 in it's technical quality, which is a major part of the problem with stud-8. Heh, problems. That's what Stud players cannot see in their game: it's failure has nothing to do with it's obsolete construction. I just don't get how they can't see the connection.

Believe me, I'm only resorting to casting my pearls on this site because I don't have the resources to do much else: if I had a BR I would be in Vegas at a rented table dealing freerolls and rake-free cash games, and inviting WSOP staff to sit in. I would do that because I know that when presented with the choice between Fl Stud and PL/NL Stud with a flip, most Holdem players prefer the flip game, and the PL/NL betting. In a blind test, with holdem players who don't know Stud at all and are not influenced by it's long history, or the fact that great players praise it, you can easily see that almost all of them will much prefer the game which is most like their's, and which uses the betting they like.
Ahh, but you play it FL? All steak is the same if you make hamburger of it. Try this test: play a HU match, best of three, for a small stake with a buddy, playing 50/50 NLSwflip, and NLHE. High card opens blind for half the pot, all bets NL after that, and make sure the river is face-up. If the high card is below a ten, or maybe a jack (your choice) you can revert to high-card bet or fold, for anything up to the pot: Same thing if the two cards are equal.

AS for people loving Badugi, I'm sure some do, but there are currently about 30 badugi cash players on PS, out of 25K+ cash players. I think my games could do much much better than that, if they had WSOP status, and endorsement from some top players, as badugi has.

Thanks for you posts Rusty, I really do appreciate your comments, although your love of lowball does concern me a little, considering Doyle's cautionary words about it driving players crazy. :-)

Doyle is one to talk, btw.

Semi-grunch:
Kansas City Lowball would be spectacular as the Main Event. Besides being a great all around game, it pretty compelling when televised as well.

QFT ^

Hey there, nice to hear from you. Aren't you the guy who invented anonymous fast-fold poker, a year or so before fast-fold poker was put online? Nice work: kudos to you for that.

Re lowball as a spectacle, do you think that at any point your idea would have been welcomed by TV executives and worth spending good money to put into action? I don't think that even a 24/7 poker channel would find reason to broadcast it. If someone went large on that idea they would lose their job, or their money, because it is guaranteed to fail, and any reasonable person can see that: the lowball market is less than 1% of the high-poker market, so who is going to watch it, if they don't like playing it? Closed-poker games are like Whist: they survive, but have been technically outclassed by games which use the same principles, but which create greater strategic opportunities by using exposed cards,. Like Whist they will always remain a minority interest for that reason.

Great post asdf, and holy crap watch the entire youtube before responding David. Every post you make in this thread slams people for naming non-holdem games when you say in your OP "If the flop games suddenly disappeared, or never existed, what would be the best game to use for the WSOP ME?"

If it wasn't a flop game, then it has to be a stud game, or a draw game. In terms of draw games, NL 2-7 draw has some of the toughest decisions of all the stud/draw games. Therefore, it was right behind NLHE for the choice of the main event.

If you ask me, the Poker Players Championship is the true test today.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTt_hVLe-Gw

Also, my reaction to the thread is more based on how it's dressed up. It's like don't debate it in stud or other poker, don't come into theory (or somewhere else) and just say "stud with a flip is great", but come into theory and post something that's supposed to look like an appealing open-ended discussion but is really just your loaded question for PLAY STUD WITH A FLIP. I don't think you'd have to do that with a game people would like. The first time I saw the rules for badugi I was like, "yeah, that'd be cool". Same with a bunch of other games I'd never heard of at some point but ended up liking. I mean people posted about badugi in draw and other poker and people liked it. Same with badaci and the like. People post about 6-card plo in plo and draw and other poker and some people liked it. So on and so forth. Why doesn't this best alternative for the Main Event seem to pass that same test?

Yeah, that was me. Wish I would have patented the idea.

Guaranteed to fail is a little strong. You mentioned that lowball is less than 1% of the high-poker market as some sort of a negative, but that seems like a non-issue. It's not as if NLHE was booming in popularity prior to 2003.

I don't entirely agree with your close-poker game premise as it applies to a televised product either (it does apply to brick & mortar venues, but not for the reason you think it does).

Lowball was one of the choices which was mooted, but I wonder if it was the second-best choice. It might have served when the WSOP was more of an annual re-union for a few dozen poker pros, but I think a competing tournament using either Draw or 5cs, or both, plus 7cs in a mixed-game format would have done much better with the wider market, which has always been more interested in high-poker. Other things being equal, if there were two competing world championships then the one with the most players and biggest prize would presumably have prevailed. And five-card stud already had some status as a de facto championship game, or at least, as the first choice for high-stakes no-limit, as portrayed in The Cincinatti Kid, and in Johnny Moss' stories about his games against Dandolos, which were mostly about 5cs.

If I may put another hypothetical, what if LB had been chosen ahead of NLHE by the WSOP and someone else had started a competing NLHE championship? Other things being equal, which event would now be the recognized world championship, and which would have the biggest field of players? The extreme view is that LB would somehow prevail, which is insupportable, and it is almost as insupportable to say that no one knows, for the reasons I have mentioned. Other things being equal, Doyle would support the NLHE tourney as the real deal, and so would Johhny Moss and some big names of the day.

Re the lowball video, my reaction is exactly that of the wider market, which can be reasonably inferred from the ratings for televised lowball, as well as it's enduringly low market share: I would not play or watch poker if lowball was the only game available, and I don't think a lot of players would, based on it's long-term performance, and the technical failings of the game, which I've mentioned elsewhere. I really do like playing and watching poker, and have played more than enough lowball to know that I don't want to play any more. So I'm not saying it out of spite, or ignorance of how the game works in practice: I would simply never sit down at a poker table again. Same goes for Razz, in its current form.

One of the advantages of NLHE is that it's much more interesting to watch than any Draw game , IMO (and certainly any FL game) because the exposed cards let us know what the players are thinking, even if you don't understand the finer points: If you ever saw that hand where Dwan holding Tx forces Greenstein to lay down AA and Eastgate to lay down 2-4 on a board of 22Tx and then won the side-bets about who actually had the best hand, then you know what I mean. You will never forget that hand, if you watched it, and I am sure that you can easily recall many similarly unforgettable NLHE TV moments, but what was memorable in the lowball video? Lederer had a pat eight, and the opener said he made a mistake, and someone made an eight which beat a nine. And that was a highlights tape! If that's the best that's on offer, I rest my case.

Regarding the player's championship, and mixed-games generally, it is now possible, for the first time in poker history, to put together mixed-game events which don't require fixed-limits, and which include variations of Stud, razz etc. Considering that poker is now 80%+ devoted to non-fixed limits, that must have some economic significance. Whether a world championship of poker should include FL is perhaps another question, but at present there is no choice, and whenever Stud games are included in mixed-games, FL must be used, which means that a large portion of the market has little or no interest.

If one of the criteria for a championship is that it be spectator-friendly, then the inclusion of FL would detract from that, because every time FL was on screen, many people would turn off. Ratings for FL games are just too low for them to be broadcast profitably. The player's championship does not rate well, or at least, not the FL games, and that's in spite of the massive stakes involved.

Thanks for the post.

We see all the cards as it is now anyway. What's the difference between watching a guy face a tough decision with trips in hold em and #5 in lowball? It's not like you wouldn't see all the cards on tv either way.

Yes, I see your point, and I was pushing the envelope somewhat, but I justified to myself that the topic was a general one. Or perhaps NVG would have been a more appropriate forum for the thread, or a modified version. Maybe not. This is the theory forum, and my topic is the theory and practice of game construction. Also my style is too polemic, and I really should go back and insert qualifiers, IMHO's etc, rather than projecting complete certainty at all times. I am an annoying **** sometimes, no doubt about it, which doesn't help my case and may partially answer your point about no one being interested.

You make a strong case regarding the lack of response, which I would usually rebut by pointing to the 60-year delay in 7cs finding a mass market - poker was still mostly a five-card game until the 1960's, and later than that, outside the US - and the delay in recognition of NLHE. But since you mention other games which I regard as inferior, which have nonetheless been well-received by some at least, you do have a point. Even a game in which half the pot goes to the highest spade can find someone to praise it, so there is no accounting taste.

I think that someone with more resources, or who was more methodical or had better people skills could have done much better, so I'm pretty sure it's not the game, it's me, to a large extent. But there is incredible inertia, not to mention hostility, to overcome. If you want to know why I persist, I have some reasons which seem rational to me, at least, but you can judge for yourself.

Back when I was more accessible and had a webpage of sorts, I did receive emails from happy players. And I've played plenty with friends who don't like much apart from holdem but will happily play 50/50 NLHE and NLSwF all day long. And I'm a long-time player, who has played many variations and liked very few, which happen to be the same ones which have dominated poker: ie, 5cs Draw and Stud, pre-holdem (which in my region was up till about 1994) , and NL holdem plus some stud and omaha sometimes, today. So my tastes are very mainstream, and it's not like I fall in love with strange games all the time: IMO there are a million bad poker variations in the world, and only the very best games are worth playing.

I was also greatly encouraged by the first person I pitched the game to, via email, who has made a fortune out of poker software. He tried it out and got back to me to say "It's clearly a superior game when compared with traditional stud...." which is a great start, which I would expect to be followed by "so" or "therefore....." because it's not very often that someone says something like that about a game as good as Stud. Unfortunately the next word was "but," as in "but I can't do anything now, and I wouldn't until it became popular anyway." I'm pretty sure it was patentable at that stage (before I published it) but I didn't realize it, or I might have had a case to make that we should partner up and do something with it.

And FWIW, when I was pestering Full Tilt a few years back to deal the game, I eventually received a private email from someone on the help desk who was kind enough to break the rules to tell me that the view from the back-room boys was that there was no value in the game, because if it was successful in taking players away from HE, they would lose, because it can't be multi-tabled like HE, and it's also slower. Hard to believe I know, but that's what he wrote, cross my heart and spit. It only works as an argument if you regard the size of the market as more or less static, and you don't count flow-through. As it is, as soon as players get tired of NLHE they leave the market, because there is no other game which suits their taste for seven-card NL poker. There are hundreds of thousands of "retired" players who can log back on at the push of a button, and might be tempted by a new 7-card NL game, and the newbie action it will create. Mmmmm. Newbies. And in any case, the argument doesn't apply to the WSOP, who could make a lot more money if they had a Stud game which could appeal to the 80% of HE players who prefer NL betting. It's really not Stud players who are the target market, because there are so few of them. It's the vast number of Holdem players who don't like FL, and therefore don't like Stud.

Also, I look at these card layouts and wonder how people cannot see the numerical pattern, and the odd game out, when five-card combinations are central:

2-3-1-1 Holdem, a hugely popular NL game
3-2-1-1 Stud with a flip, an untested but very playable NL game
3-1-1-1-(1) Stud, which is not suitable for NL, and is now economically insignificant as a result.

That's a pretty clear picture, to me anyway. Call me crazy, but I think the numbers mean something, and play of the game confirms it..

Stud players really don't like to consider the possibility that another game could replace theirs, so I don't get much joy from them, even though an expanded market would benefit them, and provide a crop of newbies. I also think that when players do try SwF they tend to use FL, because they are so accustomed to play Stud like that, but the difference in quality is most apparent when you play PL or NL. That's why HE took so long to take off, imo: it was being played with FL, and it's not much better than Stud when played with FL - in fact I prefer Stud, if I'm playing FL. So it was only when NLHE was played that it really had the advantage over Stud.

I am at a loss at the attitude of Stud writers, who can't sell their books but who would have a whole new market to write and sell to if SwF gets popular.

So while you do have a point, I have some pretty good reasons for thinking that this is just one of those unnecessary delays which make up most of poker history.

Anyway, thanks for the post, and I will try to avoid the errors you pointed out.

The difference that we can understand the dilemma without having to understand the game. Most movies involving Draw require cheating for them to be interesting, but those in which the drama of the game is the focus have used 5cs and Holdem, because anyone can see the blood sweat and fear that the exposed cards can create. Whether or not you accept the argument, the ratings are the bottom line, and Draw games have not rated well enough to justify broadcast, even though there is a huge and well-educated market of poker fans.