I was invited to dealers choice game and I know all the games they spread except for this one. 5 cards each player, flop, turn, river. Hi/lo 7 or better for low. Must use 3 from your hand and 2 from the board. Anyone ever played? Strategy? They play EVERYTHING as NL. (including 7cs) The stakes are low enough that learning won't be too expensive but I'd like to pretend I have a clue at least. Thanks for any input.

7 as the qualifier for low? Push your quality low hands HARD . . . VERY HARD.

You're going to have to be a little more careful with sets as a high hand. You're going to want to push hard with high hands when people are drawing... but people drawing to a second low board card also are drawing to the straights, SF and such and have a better chance of hitting them.

Treat it as Omaha, but much more of a focus on two-way hands. Play tighter with draws and weak hands, especially since it's NL.

On the other hand... if you can gamble against people with your nut draws, your payoff when you hit can be huge. Control the betting as best you can.

3 from your hand has a powerful impact on your board reading ability. Straights, flushes, and full houses are always possible no matter what the board is. With 5 hole cards, they'll be likely.

a set is probably worthless in this game, except if you've got the low locked up already. If any money goes in, your set is no good. In fact, an opponent can beat top set even on a Q72r flop. High trips in your hand is going to be very powerful.

With a lot of these games, you don't really need to be an expert though. Just figure out what the trash hands are (middle cards and uncoordinated 1-pair type hands in this game) and throw those away, and you'll crush your competition with simple hand selection. Many people play essentially every hand in unfamiliar games.

In crazy split pot games, you can sometimes win a bunch of money with 1-way hands. If you've got an unlikely lock one way, and enough people are staying in, go for it. Avoid getting quartered, though. If all you've got is an A2 low, you may very well not be the only one. Books will tell you to play for a scoop, which is correct (even essential) if your opponents aren't putting chips in without at least a very strong one-way hand themselves, but loose multiway action can compensate for this.

We play this in our dealer's choice game. We simply call it "reverse omaha".

We play it limit, however.

Playing it NL would be brutal, but i can see a couple of scenerios wherein it could be easy to profit.

In the limit version, i tend to play 3 to a wheel and try to hit a perfect on the flop... If i hold A 3 4 Q K I would try and hit a deuce on the flop or at least any low card with NO counterfeit card.

In NL though, this could be a risky proposition. I would really try to control the pot size with these low drawing hands.

I think i would employ a different strategy to NL by isolating with 2-way middle/low hands.

- Hands like 456XX (if a 3 or a 7 flop) or 356XX (if a 4 flops)
I would never play these hands in a full ring limit game, but in NL i think they could be key hands if you can isolate it down to heads up.
These type of hands are more useful than the standard A23 lows because they give you a backup plan. You can win the low if your opponent holds a high hand, or you can win the high with a straight if they are drawing to the nutlow.
The profit in these hands lies when you swoop the pot, which you could do a lot of time times you hit one of those key 8 cards on either side of your straight.

(This is only helpful if the game you play in isn't uber lose because if the stakes are too small and people go all in and re-buy all the time, it's not worth it to attempt to isolate)

Exactly this. These folks have been playing this game for some time now and almost nobody seemed to have a good handle on it. I saw 3 flops in 2 rotations and scooped all 3. AAA23, AAA24, A23KK. They gave me crap for only playing strong hands and then proceeded to call me down all night. Good times. Everyone else sees every flop, every time, barring pf all ins. (there were a lot)

Thanks guys. A little information is a beautiful thing.