As some of you will know, Full Tilt Poker has recently added Irish Poker to it's repertoire of games.

Irish poker is a variant of Hold'em, where instead of players receiving two hole cards they get four and must discard two after the flop round of betting. After that, it is just like a normal game of NL Hold Em.

Tips, strat, questions and discussion can all go here for this fun new game.

I doubt that the game that is completely new to the wide audience will stir a lot of strat talk soon, as the player pool is yet small (though already exceeding the PLO regular table traffic as of now , but much more PLO tables are running at other sites), the regs will be facing each other all the time, and so giving away strat tips is massively -EV.

The current consensus among PLO regs is that paired and especially double-paired starting hands are very strong in Irish, while rundowns are way weaker than in PLO. That's because sets play themselves postflop in Irish and straight possibilities and threats are smaller than in PLO. An ace-high suit still adds much strength to a starting hand - I already saw a couple of ace-high vs king-high flush stackoffs yesterday.

Been playing quite a bit recently, all of the above seems correct.

In addition, like in PLO, look for weaker players to get married to over pairs. So far I've found that people tend to either stack off way too light or miss lots of value, so i'd recommend trying to get to know your opponent a little before getting the first stack in.

Also look at the speed at which people discard their cards OTF, this will give you some clues as to where they're at

Should be a profitable game for the early adapters

I'm gonna try this today after work. Prob watch the biggest game while playing it 5NL

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Just to say that, for me, this would only indicate that the software often struggles to recognise the cards I'm trying to discard, making it look like I am pondering a decision

Are double Holdem hands like 8s8cAhKh playable?

If so, what to discard on a 8h7h3x flop? Or 8hTxJh?

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I suppose it depends if you think your opponent is chasing a worse flush. But then, since you have the A and K of hearts, the best your opponent should be chasing is Q high and it seems unlikely a good opponent will pay you off if chasing a Q high flush.

Keep top set all day.

+1

does the second flop merit any discussion? cause in my tiny plo experience bottom set is not good.



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seems like a much better game than PLO

As always, it depends on the opponent and the action, in the current unsolved state of the game (people have so different approaches) reads are much more important than in PLO. If the opponent is a PLO convert or a solid reg and has donked or check/raised into you, keep the draw (but balance your range - next time when you have a bottom set, but without a decent draw to go with it, keep it and semibluff on flushing turns, especially if you have discarded the blocking ace ). However, if he's a whale and tends to overplay top 2 or even an overpair, keep the bottom set and get as many chips in on the flop as you can.

As for the first flop, keeping a top set is almost always a no-brainer.

I like PLO much more, find it more balanced and really miss wraps in Irish; a 5-card variant with 3 hole cards held on the turn, possibly with draw poker elements, would be nice.

We have been playing this at our house most days for about a month since I started learning to really play poker (we also play 5cards and drop one on each street).
One thing we debate is you have 2pair in your hand or one pair and a flush draw.
Two pair with about 20% chance to improve or one pair and flush draw with about 50% chance to improve.

Which do you choose to play.

Top two i keep except where flop is triple broadway.
Bottom two i go for 2nd pair and flush.
Top n bottom i go flush if nut draw.

Against bad players who will pay a flush I may drop top two for top pair and nut flush draw.

^ since you say you're learning poker I'll tell you something about this that you might find useful. Poker is really a lot about hand reading and range-construction. which means a question like the one you asked doesn't have any sort of an answer like the one you suggested. Your choice has to depend, at a bare minimum, on flop action, on the number of players who saw the flop, on the amount of hands that people play and on their playing style.

We drop the cards before betting the flop, ive yet to play online so not sure if this is how they do it.
In this game you often lack fold equity so you want to choose the cards with the best showdown value hence my post, if you drop cards after betting it gives you a lot more information to construct the, range and choose obv'

Final 3 on the full tilt game of the week tournament at the moment,

Double Pairs and most hands with AA, KK seem to be the value once its near the bubble etc overpair has been good almost all the tournament for everyone from what I can see.

What would you do here, this is what I got knocked out on.

We were all in preflop I had 6688 double suited.

flop 445

I kept a 6 and a 8 for the gutshot, he had JJ and it held up.

I would have done the same. If you know you are facing a higher pair, then by going for a gutshot you're gunning for 4 outs. not 2. So yeah, you made the right play imo

i think one really interesting thing about this game is the way you only discard after the flop betting action takes place. I think it gives you a really good idea on what to drop and what not to when you might have acted differently if you discard before the betting

I think the most fun common decision in this game is when you have an overpair and the nut flush draw, and can only keep one.

i Think if he is a nit it is better to keep the Draws

Started playing this game myself recently and I'm really enjoying it. Since I hated the variance in PLO this game is a good compromise - gives you the variety that comes with 4 cards to start but doesn't have the crazy all-in drawing action that PLO has.

I've noticed the same thing someone mentioned earlier about rundowns losing value in this game. Similar to PLO I look for starting hands that give me lots of options to hit flops but unpaired rundown hands I'll only play for cheap.

I've also noticed that big overpairs are real danger hands in this game. The NLHE saying, "AA wins small pots but loses big ones," applies to a significant degree in Irish since sets, straights, flushes, and boats are so much more common at showdown than in NLHE.

As for discard decisions, I tend to err on the side of giving me chances to hit big hands. Obviously all decisions are situation dependent, but I will dump something like a bare top pair or overpair to go for a NFD.

not too sure about most of the advice here, from my exp, if u do have the nut flush draw and 2 pair, the draw should could be taken.....a set is always a no-brainer...as are flush vs str8 draws......

It may be a dump question but I'm not really good at it, so Ill just ask
Is there any software that tracks irish hands, like for a statistics and **** ?

^ AFAIK no software supports Irish yet. There is a pending request to HM2 on the matter.

Thanks, nice one Eldodo

And one more thing which is interesting one. Whats usually better when you have overpair and flop 1 pair.
Fold overpair ?

I don't understand, why would you fold an overpair to play a lower pair?