FYI, a series of Archie articles started this month in the magazine

http://www.twoplustwo.com/magazine/i...hie-part-1.php

Interesting read. One thing worth mentioning is the qualifier is different in l.v. I think it was 6s and it no one qualified best high won if I remember correctly.

Ah technically I think no you guys were playing Mizrachi then I think...

I don't think there is much of a strategic difference 66s qualifying rather than 99s. Though it would probably make a hand like 8764 more playable if you can isolate a late raiser and get it headsup. Pair outs can act as a safety value to split if you are up against a low hand that qualifies

Good article. Playability matters a ton in Archie. Two medium pair for example will probably have decent hot cold equity but it has gross reverse implied odds. Aces are weak but easier to play.

Is there any point in playing this game HU? It seems like a lot of the time you go opposite ways and chop, but sometimes you get unlucky and go the same way, and very rarely you get to scoop when you go opposite ways. But there'd be no way to know where you're at from the draws. Maybe the strategy would be to go high only unless you have a scooping hand?

It's worth it to play headsup tic tac toe if you are up against the right opponent

But it may not be as easy on the low side to qualify as you may think. 236 is just getting destroyed in equity by 99+ and you are dealt 99+ around 27% of the time. So yes I agree that it would be mainly high but still play three to wheel or three to six headed by an ace. I calculated how often you are dealt certain hands and that will be in future articles

The thing I like about Archie is that, uniquely among hilo split games, playability, equity, drawing power etc do not favor the low hands. In all other Hilo games you won't be making a big mistake to concentrate on finding quality low hands to play, and suckers play too many modest hi hands. Those games have been around long enough and the mixes incorporate enough of them that this conventional wisdom is now pretty prevalent.

Enter Archie, a game where you cannot solidify low equity while drawing for hi, and often only the hi hand can freeroll. In a landscape where the fish have learned the painful lesson to look for low hands to play, suddenly there's a game where the low hands are for suckers.

It's almost mean what we do to them.

This strikes me as a weird way to approach HU hand selection in a game where folding is almost always going to be a bad idea. I'd rather think about five-card hands and what approach is best to take with them.

Not sure what you are saying. The only thing I really opined on is that the high hands have more value in this game then the low. And to be aware in certain spots with low hands if your opponent appears to have a qualifying pair

OK, let's unpack this a bit. HU, there are 236xx hands you're going to want to play by discarding the 236: 236KK, etc. There are probably 236xx hands you're going to want to play as 236: 2236T? It's really unlikely there are 236xx hands you want to fold, because basically every hand should expect to lose less than a small bet against a 100% range, and conversely every hand should expect to lose less than half a small bet when on the button. Archie is like LHE only more so. (I don't actually know this about Archie, but I do about TD high and I don't see why it would change.)

So when thinking about our hand selection, we don't want to go straight to whether 236 plays well, as we would in a ring situation. Instead we want to come up with a system for looking at the xx cards and determining when the best way to play the hand is by keeping 236. We want to know where the borders are for playing 236 or playing something else, because we're always playing.

Ok I guess I really wasn't trying to unpack too much as I'm not anticipating playing HU Archie anytime soon. You are right, I would always be playing 236 HU. The brief point that I tried to make is that it certainly isn't in the top half of hands and in extreme bad equity shape a good deal of the time. I'm sure some people think it's a hand worthy of re raising pre

Part 2 of the four part series is now up online:

http://www.twoplustwo.com/magazine/i...hie-part-2.php

Thanks for doing these articles Scotch! They're helping me to think through some spots that I find kinda tricky, it's quite a strategic adjustment from stud/8.

I'm veryinterested in the next article in the series on playable low hands. I had an extended discussion with another player about the playability of 234xx and similar 3-straight lows (I was dealt 234xx UTG in a 5-handed game and limped (?!), 5 on the first draw, brick on second, wheel on third).

I think 234xx and 345xx should be playable from any position, even though as you state in your most recent article, "that are a still a long way towards getting any part of the pot". 234xx has 4 great cards (5s), 8 very good cards (As,6s) and 8 cards that are kinda tricky because of RIO (7s,8s). 345xx has 8 great cards (2s,6s) and 4 very good cards (As). The 4 7s aren't so bad here either because you still have a gutshot to go with an okay low draw. 456xx is a bit trickier, drawing a 3 is a lot different than drawing a 7...

I suppose it depends quite a bit on how many others are in this pot. I've not done any equity calculations yet myself but I think if I wait a few more weeks you'll show them to me in the next article, hope you also have some thoughts on other 3-wheel card hands.

Glad you like them and hoped they would facilitate some discussion. I agree that 234 and 345 are probably too good to fold from any spot and a limp with the 234 seems fine to me. It wouldn't be good to raise and then get isolated by a high hand. I believe I do have some more equity calcs in next issue but not with three card hands as I found them too complex. But if 2345 is basically an even match with aces then it's easy to see why you should not overvalue 234. Although I would play 234 in a lot of spots but I think it should be folded in face of too much action.

I'm having serious doubts about the decision to ever limp in a 5 or 6 handed game. In limit HE, (i)-I would never ever limp in a 6-handed game (I only rarely limp 9-handed and then only because I play in a fairly soft game), and (ii)-limping is almost a sure sign of small pairs or medium suited connectors, limpers usually define their range. In Archie a limp/draw 2 would essentially turn my hand face up as a 3-straight or 3-flush, maybe even a 3-wheel card hand (?). A raise/draw 2 hand would put 3OAK in my range as well.

I will have to think this through further and do some rough calculations to justify.

Yeah I can definitely see that viewpoint. In limit HE I would never limp but I like to do it in Omaha Hi/lo even when it's just 5 or 6 handed. Many may disagree with that though, I just think it keeps more players in the hand who may get trapped into bad situations that they may have avoided if I had raised.

I just think we are going to be running into a good high hand a lot and be isolated too often. If we don't like limping it or raising it, maybe we should consider eliminating the 234 altogether? That seems too tight though. I'm not sure potentially giving away information about your holding in a multiway pot is too disadvantageous though. Those more or less play themselves imo