I've been thinking about the mixed games and the order in which you would learn if choosing the easiest 1st. So some q's:

i) if we concentrate on the 3 stud games (razz, stud hi, stud hi/lo) and LHE is there a definitive measure on what's the most straightforward to learn?
ii) is it to do with the size of the game?
iii) i thought razz was stud hi in reverse. from what i've heard razz is a more straightforward game, is this correct? why?
iv) by what amount does a split pot game increase the game size?

Are we talking no experience in any poker game or coming with some background from another game? If no experience then I would say the ranking from easiest to hardest would be

LHE
Stud Hi
Razz
Stud hi/lo

I think the ranking is mostly due to the information that has to be learned and tracked to effectively play a hand.

If you're coming from another variant it depends on the variant but I would imagine would probably be very similar, especially since most are probably coming from NLH.

Size of the game usually means the blinds so no that doesn't usually effect how easy it is to learn a game. That's not to say it doesn't effect your play at different blind levels because you'll be playing against different competition.

Rules online say it's A-5 low ball where straights and flushes don't count and A always plays low.

Judging by your earlier comment and this one I think you must be using game size in a way I am not familiar with. Could you explain more what you mean by game size?

Razz is not stud high in reverse, because there are no flushes and straights. This is what makes it more straightforward than stud high. In stud high there are usually several possible hands your opponent could have, each with a different number of outs, a different likelihood due to dead cards and ranges, and a different equity against your hand or what you're drawing to.

In razz, everyone is just drawing towards one kind of hand - a low. So board/hand reading is just a case of estimating the possibilities they have paired one or more card, plus trying to figure out whether they have 1 (or sometimes more!) high cards or pairs underneath. The math becomes easier too.

If you take someone's board at face value, i.e. you assume no pairs and not big down cards, then you easily know what their best possible hand is, and your odds to beat it. If you assume they have 1 pair or brick, then you know what the best possible hand THAT could be, and your odds against that. And so forth. So typically you just have to think about a fairly small number of possibilities.

That isn't to say it's without it's subtleties. And also, it is a game where many of your opponents will willingly play extremely bad starting hands.

However, it is also a game that does NOT punish that as much as many other games. Razz does not have as many classic dominating hands on 3rd st as most games. Like in holdem, TT is a very good perfectly playable hand, but if your opponent has JJ+ you are in bad shape.

If you have a hand like, I dunno, 754 to start in razz, which is a decent starting hand, there is no hand that completely crushes you for the most part. Against A23, the best possible starting hand, you have 55% equity. With the right dead cards in your favor, you could even be a favorite.

Stud hi/lo is probably among the hardest to read hands in, because your opponent may be going high, low or both. It also tends to play differently than a lot of other games, also because it's split pot. You'll see a lot more multiway hands and it becomes extremely important to get good at eking extra bets out of people (and or avoiding having them extracted out of you)

Stud games in general have the additional challenge of there being no fixed position. Stud high and highlow start with the highest board, razz starts with the lowest board. That can shift over the course of a hand.

I also don't really know what you mean by "size" of the game here, given your comments regarding it.

Thanks guys.

Size I meant in relation to number of points on a decision tree.

I don't totally fully understand how it works myself but I am assuming in NL and PL games, the ability to bet a large number of different betsizes exponentially increases the possible different games that could play out.

So for Limit games, the fact that although the flop games may be structured slightly different to the stud games the betting structures are similar (the number of different possible lines seems to be more manageable. They seem finite), so is there any recognisable difference in the number of possible games that can be played eg possibly due to the different number of betting streets, across the 4 limit game variants I had mentioned?

Ah I see. So I would say that probably razz is the lowest game size by that metric. I'm not sure I know whether stud8 or stud high is next. For purely enumerating the game tree, stud8 is probably larger, but every game has a lot of branches which are essentially rarely reached because you'd have to play somewhat oddly to get to their parents, if you see what I mean.

This may not be definitive, but Sklansky on Razz is a significantly shorter book than Hold Em Poker for Advanced Players or Seven Card Stud for Advanced Players. And arguably there's not much you can write about on razz beyond that book, while there is much more territory to explore beyond those books for the other games. (I leave out stud hi/lo, but it would be reasonable to assume that game is less straightforward to learn than stud high.)

Thanks every1!

If that hasn't totally answered what I was looking for. It definitely has given me some food for thought. (Similarly, I had asked another obvious q in this sub-forum last year and when I went back my understanding had progressed a lot so it definitely works for me)

Rusty- if you hadn't already been made aware in Talal Shakerchi's Joeingram1 podcast, he said you were probably the best 2p2 poster.