Hello everyone !!

I would like to present you my game which is in my opinion a little bit better than classic No Limit Hold'em. As you know, in this case, the phrase "a little bit" means a lot. I will get back to this later on. Before I start with the rules of my game, a few things about Short Deck Poker.

SDP was created because players needed a faster game with bigger pots and this is the point I want to emphasize - No Limit Hold'em can be really slow sometimes. I'm sure you have experienced that many times and thought "Ok, so now I only need a decent hand and I will make a move" and decent hand is ..... not coming. You can sit and wait for something playable and all you get is some trash hole cards or hands to weak to be played at certain spots. So you fold, fold and fold. This can be really frustrating and boring. SDP somehow deals with this problem and hole cards are more playable, more players see the flop. I personally don't like SDP that much because of 3 reasons:
- Flush is stronger than Full House (I got used to the classic ranking)
- Ace plays as 5 in the low straight (hard to remember for beginners)
- Pre flop odds (remind me of a pot limit game)

Let's imagine that NLH is an engine of a car. SDP means a really hard tuning for this engine. In my game "Lowrider" the tuning is more delicate and none of the 3 things I've just mentioned exist. So, here are the rules of my poker game, feel free to comment, rate or ask questions. My knowledge about new poker variants is really deep and I'm sure we can have a creative discussion here.


LOWRIDER NLH (game rules):

Lowrider is a NLH variant in which the values of all cards are reversed EXCEPT FOR THE FLUSH.

This means that the worst card is an Ace and the best card is 2. Everything is flipped 180 degrees except the situation when you hit a flush. The classic hand ranking that Hold'em uses stays 100% the same, although the names of two hand types were changed.
For example when you have a pair of queens it is quite a weak pair, a pair of fours is much stronger. The best hole cards is 2,2 which is a bit like A,A in normal Hold'em, but it's not so strong anymore.
You may ask "Why don't you leave all the hands as they were and reverse cards strength when they make a flush ? It would be easier to play. It should be the same thing after all." Well, not quite. The difference is the ACE card which always plays as "1" in the A2345 straight or straight flush. This gives some extra odds to the worst card which the ace is. The ace can now hit a nut flush or nut straight A2345 or weak straight TJQKA. So the ace has become quite an interesting card to play.
Basically, hole cards like :
- weak suited connectors
- two very weak cards
- mid + weak suited cards
- weak pair
are now stronger because they have higher flush potential. This will often make a difference for the player when making decisions.
Please note - I'm intentionally not using words like "low" or "high" card to not get you confused. Instead I use words like "weak" and "strong".
Here is the unchanged hand ranking with the new names (starting from the weakest hand).
1. Low Card 3 5 7 8 J
2. Pair 5 5 8 9 Q
3. Two Pair 3 3 7 7 5
4. Three of a Kind 9 9 9 3 8
5. Straight 4 5 6 7 8
6. FLUSH Q T 7 5 2
7. Full House 3 3 3 K K
8. Four of a Kind 7 7 7 7 5
9. Straight Flush 3 4 5 6 7
10. Havana A 2 3 4 5

This game will include more players in the flop phase, bigger pots and less situations when a player is forced to fold because of hole cards being to weak.

I look forward to all your comments, I'm ready to reply to them. It would be awesome if someone could test the game in play. It may take a while to get used to the reversed card values, but it's quite easy I think. I'm sure the game deserves a lot of attention even from pro players.

Grzegorz Jakubowicz, Krakow, Poland

To make it less confusing why don't you just reverse the values of cards for flushes only?

The above was recently proposed in he theory subforum to make flush blockers in Omaha harder to old since the 2 would be required to make the nuts.

I've already answered that question, but I'll explain it again. The aim is to give the weakest card (ace) as much extra odds as possible. Ace plays as "1" in the A2345 straight giving the card extra odds pre flop. If it was only the flush that was reversed ace would be the strongest card. You would have to give some extra odds to the deuce then to make it more balanced. It would not be possible unless you make a straight with JQKA2 which would be absurd. The point of this game is to take as much as possible from the strongest cards and give it to the weakest cards. It's a major difference between those 2 options although I understand that the first impression might be misleading for you.

And about that Omaha idea, I would have to see the thread you mentioned to say if it was the same thing. I'm sure it wasn't 100 % the same

The omaha thread was the rule changed I suggested in place, not your low variant.

I am still not following what you're variant is but the suggestion from that thread was that flushes play like low ball where A is always low and 2 is always high. Everything else including straights play the same.

Any way I am not quite sure how your variant just doesn't reverse everything so that 2 become like an A other than A plays high and low. But whatever gl.

Thank you! Well, it might be the language barrier since I live in Poland. Talking about reversing things here and not reversing them there is not easy and might be sometimes confusing or tricky. I would suggest to concentrate on the first sentence of the rules, this should help you understand the game. Please look in this thread for more questions people ask plus more examples so the rules become more clear to you.

HINT:
step 1 - reverse the flush
step 2 - reverse everything
final result = you get everything reversed except for the flush