"Texas 1-7"

Introduction: Very simple game, very simple rules. I think it's a great option for beginners or people who find NLHE too difficult to master. At first, I thought it's just too simple but later on I realized it actually does match the minimum requirements. The hand ranking is very basic, but all hands use two types of information (card value + suit) and there's 7 of them, so that's enough in my opinion for a poker game. The deck is very thin which allows stronger hands to appear more often. The game is very easy to read and play.

Rules: 6 players maximum, rules are based on No Limit Texas Hold'em (2 cards + 311 board), 4 betting rounds. The deck is 18 cards (spades + hearts, from 6 to Ace). You can only hit a Straight Flush in this game, but there are 7 types of it. The weakest hand is 1 card Straight Flush, next one is 2 card Straight Flush and so on .... finally the best hand is 7 card Straight Flush. The number of cards your Straight Flush contains represents its strength - the more the better. Ace can also play as "5", in hands like [Ah 6h 7h 8h].

Strategy: It's much easier to track down your opponent's hand comparing to NLHE. It's just possible to calculate for players like me, because there's much less information you need. I could never do that properly in NLHE. I'm not sure how the ranges work here - there are only 153 starting hands. Structure of the game is tightened up because of the short deck, which should give action.

Conclusion: The game has a little bit of everything that NLHE does have. It's much smaller and more simple though - probably easy to solve. Normally I would say it's too simple, but there's just something in it which makes all the factors fit together. It seems it could be a good introduction to NLHE for players. Maybe more skilled players will also like it, I don't know.

153 starting hand combinations isn't an impressive number, but there's still some decent variety here:

K A - high suited connectors, very good hand, acts as a 2 card nut Straight Flush already, very strong hand if you hit Qh or QJh on the board

J 8 - 2 gap connectors, good hand, very strong if you hit 9Th on the board, if you hit 97h or QTh - the second card will act as a strong blocker then

6 7 - low suited connectors, good hand, connects easily with the flop

K Q - two unsuited high cards, decent hand, any high card(s) on the flop will work well with it

Q 7 - two unsuited cards, quite weak hand, must hit high spade or low hearts to connect with the flop

6 8 - two low unsuited cards, very weak hand, connects only with low cards

Only six categories, but it shows that pre-flop actions can be read too - which means the player is able to read information from all previous streets. The game maybe ridiculously simple, but it's undeniably good.

What does it mean for a poker game that it can be easily solved ?

I think it means pretty much nothing in real life. It only proves its simplicity, that's all. In a live game you're not able to use solver and you can't memorize all the solver knowledge and bring it to the live table. There's enough possible situations in the game that will make you think. And when online, it's kind of the same thing - you can't use solver because it's just not allowed to do that.

Texas 1-7 is a very good game. Beginners will love the fact it reads and plays so easily. And better players should like the fact that the game attracts less skilled players, so they should also play it to take advantage of that.

Tonight I woke up in the middle of the night and started shuffling cards and deal some hand examples. I'm already kind of addicted to this.

I think it's pretty sick that a game which looks like useless trash is actually a very good game. Don't underestimate the power of simplicity and please post your thoughts. I'm ready to counter-strike all the criticism and defend this game