Here is how to make 6 max NLHE practically unsolvable and thus way more bot-resistant. It also introduces new elements and may make for much more fun game.

1)Rule change: once someone folds preflop they expose exactly one card for everyone to see (they may choose whatever card they please).

This simple change creates a game which has unpredictable deck distribution (players who fold can expose any card according to any strategy they like) as well as make about every pot different. Card removal implications are huge and every spot has to be played according to what is visible on the table. This turns the whole pre-prepared strategy on its head. You have to pay attention and evaluate strength of the hands on the fly. Even if someone wants to solve remaining HU spots they can't do that reliably as the remaining card distribution is unknown (because it depends on what strategy the people who exposed one card used to choose them).

Added bonuses from rec player point of view:
-prepared preflop tables are useless
-multitabling is way more difficult as every spot is different
-mind games with showing cards, players who fold still participate in the hand in some sense

Thoughts?

We play a variant in my home game called NL Foldem where as soon as any hand is folded its turned faceup in front of the player and remains for the rest of the hand. Mandatory point and laugh at whoever flops top pair + having folded.

I like this twist on it.

Could in theory have some collusion issues where if you're in a multiway pot you can reveal a card to influence action when folding. Does seem better if limited to only preflop.

My initial take is this is a very good idea.

Will bring it up on the Pokercast this week to see what people think.

^ Where both cards are automatically turned over the game would be a lot quicker and the collusion implications are lowered. The cards should stay face up though, we don't want it to be a memory game.

With one card it doesn't have to be collusion but even if Player A knows that Player B always shows his highest card, then he has an unfair advantage over Player C who has never sat with Player B before.

The disadvantage here is that the deck distribution is then known and remaining game (once it's HU) is very easy to solve (cause so many cards are exposed).
Maybe to reduce the collusion implications the 2nd card is shown at the end of the hand so everyone can take notice.

Yes, because moving the poker closer to a state of complete information will obviously make the game harder to solve :|

I think there's a pretty big difference between reducing the effectiveness of simplistic strategies or simplistic bots and reducing the effectiveness of bots in general.

Making a game more complex doesn't necessarily make bots worse at a game relative to humans. Probably just the opposite in a lot of cases I'd guess.

I love this idea as an increased fun factor. The dealer should choose which card to open to avoid players colluding each other.

On the other hand, it would increase the skill level further, making it even harder for weak players.

Speaking of new ideas, here is something i thought about for a while. In tournaments, everyone gets a "run it twice" card once a day, to use in a big flips/crucial allins/whenever they wanted. To reduce the insane mtt variance a bit. Thoughts?

This variant would be the opposite from unsolvable is my first thought. It would require new work/study from good regs but in the long term it will be more "solved" than hold'em

I'm sure a lot of people enjoy the thought of reducing mtt variance but this seems near impossible to enforce in practice

can I play in your game next week

I feel like there's a lot of potential here but for it to be fully coherent we need to come up with a way for a player's showing strategy to have some possibility of benefiting them in some way. Otherwise being forced to choose a card when there's no inbuilt reason for them to 'care' about the choice will rapidly become an annoyance. Also if they don't care about it, what incentive do they have not to slow the game down by getting distracted by something more worthwhile and leaving the dealer/software to make the decision for them?

Showing both folded holecards, even if only preflop, would lead too much faster playing profiling therfore it would profit mainly the good players and HUD users.

I would pay 1% more rake for tournaments with at least one run-it-twice card.
That'd be so ****ing great!

By this logic, NLHE is already unsolvable because you don't know what strategy your opponent is using.

The fact is any added information only makes the game more solvable, not less.

This seems like the biggest pro/con. I'm sure it would benefit people with HUDs tremendously since it can effectively narrow ranges and have more information to be readily displayed.

I like the idea from a anti-botting perspective, but I dont think it will have a positive impact on recreational players vs professionals


My initial thought was I don't like it and wouldn't try to grind these games if regular NLH was still around. I'd rather play PLO

This was my immediate thought. Not sure if it is right though.

Looking forward to hear you and tchan talk about this!

Hello Ricky.
1) Are you sure this is a game that is closer to a state of complete information? (If so, how do you know if a player is going to expose a card after your preflop play?)
2) Are you sure that being closer to a state of complete information anyhow implies game being easier to solve? I've heard that chess is not even close to being close to being solved and I've also heard that chess is a game of complete information. In fact, do you think these two things actually correlate anyhow?

just implement some joker aa/kk cracker that loses to everything else at showdown to fight those nits

you guys either didn't understand the proposed change or you don't have a very good idea of how solving works in practice (and in theory)

shocked that one of these threads has a good idea in it, sounds fun and would help attract players i think

More info clearly adds a new layer of complexity in the logic. It's just a new variable to consider when making a decision.

Whether it's more or less solvable - it either can or it can't - but greater complexity would favor a bot since there're more opportunities for human error.

This rule would open up a whole world of different scenarios, complexities and levelling.

UTG opens,
UTG+1 3bets,
fold (shows A),
Button cold 4 bets,
SB folds (shows A)
BB folds (shows K)
Etc
Etc

Same hand could play out with all folds showing low cards instead and it would be enormously different.

I like it.....especially from the levelling perspective. Would definitely be a far more complex game from a meta, multi-level thinking perspective.

On later streets it would be even more complex on say drawy boards.

If you thought position was important now, wait til you play this game!

Edit- just reread OP again.....cards are only shown preflop. I was assuming they're shown for every fold.....which would be interesting also but probably favours the button too much.