Quote:
What are some good swingo angle shoots?
I don't want to give the impression that I like angle shooting. Swingo is a ridiculous game, and in an attempt to incorporate elements of many other poker games, an element of angle-shooting was added for completeness.
A big part of the game is which cards you choose to expose when you separate your hole cards from your board cards. This was intended to mimic the angle-shoot of flashing a card to mislead a player. Mike Caro outlines one such play in his
Book of Tells, and I recently had a French dude try something similar at the Aviation Club. French dude moved a big bet into the pot with the same hand that held his hole cards, intentionally flashing me a red Trey when the board had a four-flush in Clubs showing, trying to sell either a bluff or value bet of the bottom straight. I had to fold the top straight, because his other card was almost certainly the A
.
In Swingo, everyone's boards are also in play for everyone else's hand, so you can make a deceptive play that forces player A to fold the card that would allow player B to beat you. Here's an example:
On the deal, you have a set of eights, a great starting hand. Once the boards and river card are out, you have bricked your full house draw, and only have trips.
Player A (who has never played Swingo before) has a probable
four-flush in his hand, which he will complete with a spade from your board, and Player B is showing a pair of Deuces, which means a probable two-pair hand (knowing this takes some 'splaining, so just trust me), which he will fill with the 2
from player A's board if A stays in the hand.
Player B wants to extract value from both you and player A, but he cannot beat you if player A folds. He bets, you say "We both filled! Let's dance!" and re-pot it. Player A folds his flush, and in so doing, folds player B's boat. Player B knows you are not full, since none of your cards are paired in sight (a necessity for a full house in Swingo), so he makes a crying call. The angle is that taking advantage of player A's inexperience lost the pot for player B.
More than any other game I can think of, Swingo requires players to manage the betting behavior of their opponents, keeping key players in a pot while eliminating others. This is an area of the game ripe for angle shooting.