Short Deck Beginner rules and tips: What you need to know
Before you sit down to play, you should find out which rules and gameplay the poker room offers. Rarely applied is the rule of trips beat a straight, but since its not very popular, you will have a hard time finding a poker room that goes by this rule.
The most popular way of playing is to add antes to the game instead of playing with blinds. This means everyone pays one ante and the button pays 1 ante + 1 BB (button blind), so the more players at the table, the more money in the pot at the start of the hand. You shouldn’t think of a $1 ante game of Shortdeck the same as $0.50/ $1 blinds in NLH, because Shortdeck generally plays much bigger and the cost per round is almost 5 times greater.
Example: $10 ante + $10 BB
In a 6-handed game everybody is posting the ante and the button will have to post ante + BB, so we will have a preflop pot of $70 in total ($60 ante + 1BB). Take note, the Button gets a “discount” on calling a raise preflop, due to having already posted the button blind.
Another major change in 6+ is the hand ranking. A flush now beats a full house. Why so? The answer is simple, it is mathematically more difficult to hit a flush than it is to hit a full house. Instead of 9 outs for a flush draw, you now only have 5 outs, which is roughly a 32% chance by the river, to complete your flush. This change makes suited hands a lot more valuable, in that when you hit your flush, you are likely to get paid from e.g. a full house or a straight and it’s very rare to hit flush over flush. However, flopping a flush draw will occur less often in Shortdeck than in NLH.
Below is the Hand Ranking of Six-Plus Hold’em:
Raise Sizes Pre-Flop
Since Six Plus Hold’em is usually played in such a different format, beginners can often make the mistakes of using their opening sizes of a regular NLH game in 6+. A solid strategy for raise sizes isn’t too apparent. How big should you raise first-in or when 3-betting? When to limp/shove?
Lets look at some of these question in a more detailed way.
Example: $10 ante + $10 BB
In a 6-handed 6+ game, after everyone posts the ante and the button posts their ante and 1 button blind (BB), there is a pre-flop pot size of $70 in total ($60 ante + 1 BB). What size should your open raise be?
As a general approach I would add 1 BB to the pot size, so in this case I would open raise to 80$. For every limper, I think you should go times two, meaning in our example we would raise to 100$ ($70 + $10 limp + two times ante of $20) . Players rarely limp fold, so when holding a premium hand, you want to protect your hand, as well as get money in while you are ahead of their range.
Which hands should you limp and why?
As always in poker you should try to balance your ranges. When stacks are more shallow (50BB or less) you should limp a lot more often in early position, which will give you a good chance of either seeing a flop without risking too too much pre-flop, or winning the pot pre-flop with dead money, if you decide to jam over someones isolation raise and then fold to your all-in.
So basically I would like to limp with hands that have a lot of postflop playability. Hands like A9o, K8, Q7,T6 can just go in the muck. Hands we would like to play are QT, 89, 9T, JT, suited or off-suited. Those hands will make a straight a very large percentage of the time. The premium hands are obviously still as strong as they are in No-Limit Hold’em and should always be played. For instance, AK has 44% against KK, and JT is a coin-flip (50/50) against AK. Those close equity’s will make the game have a lot more variance than a regular NLH Game.
For 3-bet sizes I take a 4x approach. If you have an open raise of 80$, a raise to 320$ with your 3-betting range is a good size to go with, but don’t expect many folds pre-flop, when you put in a 3-bet, hence don’t 3-bet too wide.
Probabilities change in a 36-Card deck
With only a 36-Card deck, the chance of hitting a straight in Six Plus Hold’em is much higher. An Ace can make a low or high straight and will essentially count as the 5, on a board of A-6-7-8-9. It takes a bit of time to wrap your mind around the fact that an Ace can count as a 5 as well, and it’s likely that you miss that your opponent can have a straight with e.g. 86 on A-7-K-9-K or that you don’t see your own straight with A8 on 9-Q-Q-7-6. It’s important to keep in mind that straights happen more often in Shortdeck, in fact on any non-paired board there is a possible straight out there.
Because straights happen much more often it’s important for your overall hand strength that your two holecards are connected, have one or at most two gaps. For that reason JT is a strong hand in that it makes a lot of straights and it’s always the nut straight when using both holecards.
Preflop Starting Hands adjustment
When choosing the hands you play and how to play them, you need to pay attention to the changes of the relative hand strengths.
Connected hands like 89, 9T, TJ or QJ are much stronger starting hands in Short Deck than in NLH. You will flop an open ended straight draw with JT or T9 19% of the time. 12% with QJ. In comparison with KQ it’s only going to be 6% of the time.
Pre-flop a hand like JT is now almost a coin flip to a hand like AK because all the low cards that don’t connect with either of these two starting hands are gone.
As AK would obviously win on all low, disconnected boards its relative strength is now significantly diminished.
The same applies to connected boards. Let’s say a hand is:
- You: T9
- Villain: AK
- Flop: K-7-8
In regular Texas Hold’em, you’re now chasing the straight draw with about 32% equity (according to the Rule of 4) while in 6 Plus Holdem this is almost a coin flip on the flop with the straight draw having over 45% equity.
Low pocket pairs are not great hands. It is very tempting to always want to see a flop with low pairs. However there are not many great scenarios, even if you hit a set. Let’s say you limp with 66 in second position and you see a flop multi-way of 6♣8♣T♦. You’ll need to play this strong, but against a common get-it-in range of e.g. 97,88,TT,T8,T6,J9 and T9, you are only about a 60/40 percent favorite.
This being said, you should still try to see a flop with hands such as 66–TT, while i consider TT as one of the stronger pocket pairs that also has decent equity against some players limp/shoving range especially in more shallow games, as e.g. on GGPoker.
While 66–99 have enough value to be limp/calls preflop, they should generally always be a fold against all-ins of > 50a.
Don’t overplay top pair/top kicker
Of course, top pair/top kicker is often still the best hand, but nonetheless it will be more likely now a) that you are already beat and b) that your opponent has more outs.
As a rule of thumb, you shouldn’t move all-in anymore with a top pair on the flop and you usually shouldn’t bet it for value anymore on the river.
With a 36 card deck, there are simply more higher value hands possible such as two pair and straights occur in almost every hand especially if it’s multi-way. This being said, your top pair will be stronger if you are heads up, opposed to when its three or four way to the flop.
You will have to pay attention to the boards run-out if you are going for value with top pair on the river.
Let’s have a little Quiz to find out in which scenario we should go for value on the river, considering all hands are a heads up pot.
Hero has AQ and there are no flushes possible.
Board 1: A-9-T-9-7
Board 2: A-J-9-6-T
Board 3: A-9-J-8-K
Click for the answer
The answer is Board 1! While its not always this simple, its a more easy decision to value bet your top pair when the board pairs to the 2nd or 3rd lowest card, since it’s not very likely that our opponent called us down with 2nd or 3rd pair. Also on Board 2 and 3 there are very few hands that we beat with our top pair, making this a more easy check back scenario.
Now you should be ready to get your first hands of this action packed game in. Best of luck at the table!
