I am 43 years-old and play with older people (60-80) - 8-handed. I have the most experience with the games spread at casinos and love all sorts of non-holdem variants. We have two weekly games: 8 card stud Hi-Lo no qualifier including a shared community card, and a dealers-choice with that game, a variant with two community cards where you can only use one for Lo and one for Hi, and 5-card Omaha Hi-Lo, where you can play your five cards as a made hand.

The dealer's-choice is boring to me mainly because it's too loose and I can't find a way to use skill for an advantage.

I'd love to add a new game. I was thinking Drawmaha (high using the board, low using you hand). There will be a lot of action and players are familiar with both sides. The problem is we play 8-handed so if there are too many draws, we'd have to reshuffle the discards.

Another option would be 5-card stud, Hi-Lo with no qualifier. It's simple and quick, and the no-qualifier will bring more action.

Does anyone have other suggestions? All games are:
- Hi-Lo
- Nut low is 6-4-3-2-A
- 10 cent/20 cent w/ 50 cent dealer ante
- 1 bet and 3 raises

Thanks.

2-11. Like Omaha, except flop is only 2 cards, and you use one, two, or three of your hole cards, instead of exactly 2.

Very easy to learn the basics, never run out of cards, and very action game.

7/27 is a top pick with my friends.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven_twenty-seven

We modify it to have people dealt two cards down and you choose which one to flip adding a bit more of a strategic element.

If you really want to make it spicy play it as pot limit.

I've posted about a few of our games in the past, search and maybe you'll find something you like.

Currently we play a lot of 2-3-5.
Double board Omaha H/L8
Play:
2 from your hand and 3 from a board (traditional)
3 from your hand and a column (2) from the double board.
5 from your hand


Regarding 7/27 - We play 7.5 / 27.5 with 2 down cards to start (they stay down). We also play 'price is right' style, where closest to without going over wins. Once you get to 8, you can't win low. Once you get to 28, you have to fold.
* We now have an alternative version, introduced last game. Once per game, after taking a card, you can discard any single card, and no longer take cards. It was called a lot, we'll see if it sticks.

I guess it all depends on the trustworthiness of the players in your game to play fair, but my friends and I used to play rather an apparently complex game, (both in play and in strategy terms; although the play is actually simple enough to get right after a few rounds), we called Passing Florida Hi-lo which had all you're looking for. Over the years, it became a firm favourite in our Dealer's Choice games and no two players were ever accused of or believed to be cheating overtly. (However, you'll see that you might use a strategy to attempt to force the recipient of your passed cards to play high or low when you are going to play low or high, to take him out of competing for your prospective half of the pot, so there is definitely the possibility of low percentage team playing if the players aren't there just for the beer and the craic.)

We'd all be dealt seven cards down, and then all would pass three of these cards to the player on our right, at exactly the same time. Then two cards from the new hand of seven. Then one card. In other words, after the three passes, you could end up with six different cards and one original card; or, possibly, three different cards and four original cards.

Each player would then discard one card.

Now, we would stack our six cards as we wanted them to be revealed, unchangeable from there, and place them in a pile in front of us.

The top cards were then exposed and the first highest card opened the betting. We played low limit with a maximum of three raises on any card.

Second card exposed, etc; third, etc; fourth; etc. That was the betting over.

Now, the fun part.

We took two chips behind our backs, selected no chip, one chip or two chips in a closed hand, brought it out in front of us, keeping the other hand behind our backs, and had a "3 - 2 - 1 - show!" simultaneous reveal of whether we were playing high, (one chip), low, (no chip), or for a scoop, (two chips).

Everyone's two downcards would then be revealed, (if they wanted to make a claim relating to their best five-card high or low out of their six cards), and the usual argumentative banter would start over who had won which half of the pot. If someone had gone for the hi-lo scoop and had been beaten by a high or a low caller, he lost all rights to the pot. The pot was split between the best high caller and the best low caller; or, the full pot went to the best high caller if there was no low caller, and vice versa.

Flushes and straights counted, so obv the best low was an off-suit A2346.

Important things to remember are the cards you passed; how you stack your final cards to misrepresent what you have or what you are pretending to have; and how you can steal half the pot by trying to guess the way others are going to go on their reveal. (If someone stacked their cards, say, as 6h4h3h6sXX, they could have the nut low, or a straight flush, or quads, or a normally useless king-high. If they had the king-high, they might choose to go high, depending on all the other cards showing, and win half the pot if the other players all went low.)

Give it a whirl, if you can. I guarantee you'll enjoy the game once you discover the nuances.

We used to call that one Anaconda, and some players also called it Pass the Trash or Screw Your Neighbor.

unless almost everyone plays every hand games that take too long makes for a boring night.

what does work is having a small pile of index cards with different games on them and the dealer or the loser of the last pot gets to pick the next game. loser preferably as then more games are chosen randomly.

Most popular new game in our group is called Scrotum (or Pot Luck in more polite company).

Each player get 5 hole cards face down, decides which ones that they want to keep and discards the rest. Board deals out 3-card flop, 1-card turn, and 1-card river with betting in between each street.

Make the best poker hand using ALL of your hole cards and add exactly enough board cards to make a 5-card poker hand. For example, if you kept 4 hole cards, use only 1 board card. If you kept 3 hole cards, use 2 board cards.

We play it pot-limit and high/low split. Main thing to remember is that it is not Omaha, you must use all your hole cards. Also, we require players to discard as they make their pre-flop action.

Short deck, also known as 6+

- have a spare deck handy that you remove the 2-5 cards so you don’t have to do it every time someone selects it
- dealt exactly like hold em
- Aces play as a 5 for the bottom end of straights, and obviously the high end on broadway.
- flushes are better than full houses
- technically trips should be better than straights, but it depends where you play. For ease of play, some places don’t play this way, but from a statistical standpoint, it will be harder to get trips than a straight


That’s pretty much all the rules

I heard this on your podcast, and introduced it to our crowd. Our game is a spread limit game and we play a lot of hi/low8 games. This is played hi/low8, and our twist is playing it "crazy" meaning you don't have to pitch your cards until after the flop.

Our usual host has commented how quiet we are compared to his previous game, and it's in a nice quiet neighborhood. So naturally we call SCROTUM loudly, and at least one request for a repeat "What are we playing?"...

We’ve been giving Scrotum a try and liking it.
Heard a podcast where they were trying to come up with a “better” name.

I like “Hold Some”.

Just in case OP sees this bump:

Lowmaha

Omaha 8 or better, with the caveat that the board stops when there is a possible low. If the flop is all lower than eight, one round of betting. Conversely, the board can keep going if all cards are high/paired (after river, burn & turn, round of betting, etc until board allows a low).

I think our record board was 14 cards, due to high cards/pairing.

For better results, make the low qualifier seven instead of eight.

Howdy Doody

Here's a link, but the fundamental idea is that Kings are wild for low, and threes are wild for high. (Of course, on the high side, King is a King, and on the low, a three is just a three).

This notion can be applied to any high-low game, works better in some games than others. Seems like OmaDoody was always popular (Omaha/8 with K/3 rules).

Man, that old poker group was a ton of fun, I'm sad that it broke up. We'd always have at least one game made up in real time that was based on current events, very creative people.