Playing in a home game this weekend and we want to mix it up a bit later in the night when we lose a few players. Going to go with HORSE. Any tips on making dealing on the split pots as painless as possible so we still get in a decent amount of hands.

Thanks!

-ZEN

Just stack the chips as you go. Always do two equal stacks, even if there's no low possible, so as not to clue people in to that fact if they don't see it.

If you're doing a tournament with increasing blinds, make sure the bets are easily multipliable by a bunch of drunk degenerates.

Have players turn over their cards and have one main player controlling the hand reading. Typically this would be the dealer but if you rotate and the current dealer isn't that great go with a more experienced person. Having everyone talking at once, declaring their hands and everyone elses just adds to the confusion.

If you rule a hand out for both pots fold it so it's out of the way. Don't be afraid to push up the board cards, seperate, just a little the players cards to help identify the hand. Say, in Omaha 8 a player has A,A,2,8 and board is 2,3,5,J,4. Move his A,2 away from the A,8 and move up the 3,4,5 to identify this as possibly the best hi and lo. If another player has a 2,6 or an 6,7 then do the same for them. You might even need to decide them one at a time. Do it orderly too, work from player to player if you must, rather than jumping around. After a little bit it'll become easier and players will become better at calling their own hands.

Best advice is probably to make sure somebody trustworthy stays sober.

This is good. I wouldn't even have considered it.

Get good chips, preferably clay. Don't play with cheap chips or really slick ones.

Stacking split game pots is MUCH faster when you can split by stack size, not by counting out the pot.

when heads up in split games keep each player's betting separate

Have any of you been able to do this successfully? I can't imagine this being done at a home game without a professional dealer. Or maybe everyone being sober.

Everyone sober and a good Omaha/8 hand reader works fine. We usually end up having the most experienced player deal, but passing the deal works fine too. Critical thing is to have a guy that can read the Omaha/8 hands.

I do it all the time. I'm experienced at reading the hands and splitting the pots, so even when we pass the deal I take care of the split pots.

A few suggestions on split pots:

1. Determine the high hand first. Then muck any hand which doesn't have a low.

2. If you have tied hands for the high or low:
a. Split the chips into two.
b. Award one half to the side which has only one winner.
c. Now split the remaining chips among the tied hands (which might include the winner of the first side).

3. Stacking chips to split the pots is much easier than counting them. For instance, make two equal stacks of blacks, two equal stacks of reds, etc. Then do the math on just the odd chips out.

I agree with everyone else - having a couple of experienced hand readers at O helps immensely. Barring that, stopping everybody arguing and being methodical will help.

My game goes very smoothly most of the time, but playing live, I've seen the scene where EVERYONE wants to offer up their opinions about the low. Sometimes it's best to shut everyone down and talk out what is going on.

Don't sweat it, with a good group of people, you'll have little trouble. And everybody doesn't have to be super sober, but super drunk is no good either.

We do tend to pre-chop pots, but I will often stack it all together if no low is possible. I got bitched out in Tulsa for announcing a hand as "Aces and deuces, no low" because I was interfering with someone else's action and "somebody with a low might muck", but in a friendly home game, this should NEVER be an issue. I'd argue the same for live casino, but some people want to angleshoot and be nitty.

While I am in favor of mucking non-winner hands to reduce confusion, your chops are slightly off since the priority for extra chips is high hand, then first after dealer. If you have a $13.25 pot, $6.75 is split for the high, and $6.50 for low. However, I am open to being wrong on this.

Use the backboard. Most players have a hard time shooting at the backboard.

if you have a rotating dealer, skip the second deck so that the dealer/or someone not int he hand can shuffle, while the players involved split the chips. We're also gonna try a horse game in a few weeks, but out plan is to seperate it from our "regular" hold em game so that we have 5-8 players with good understandings of the games for the first time out

We ran HORSE at my place as a turbo tourney (15 min blinds) last month, and it was very slow moving first time through with the split pot games. I think on the first Omaha H/L level we played 4 hands in 15 minutes. However, it did pick up later, especially when it got short-handed. I think it would be best to play with 4-5 players - not a full table of 8.

One way we sped things up was by eliminating the ante on the stud games and just going with the bring-in. It's always a pain in the ass trying to find out who shorted the ante.

Good luck -

Spike

The real answer is to not play HORSE but play HOT (hold'm, pot limit omaha, and 2-7 tripple draw) by far the best mix game format.

Yeah that is a pretty gooot explaination. Just pay attention to what game your on also.

Keep the chips in front until the hand is dealt, it's trivial.

I have to admit I laughed a little.