Five-Flop Omaha and other narcotics
Professional poker players aren’t like the rest of us, the argument goes. They aren’t just gamblers. They know how to find an edge and exploit it. In fact, they insist on it.
I know better.
Most poker pros are lucky, that’s all — lucky they can usually find a poker game in which to channel their gambling impulses. Otherwise, they’ll bet on anything, and “the edge” is just a flimsy excuse.
Exhibit 1: Chinese Poker
The first time I laid eyes on Doyle Brunson, I was an impressionable pup of 32, imagining that any game for which Brunson had to use both hands to look at his cards must be the ultimate test of poker skill. Though I am finally willing to concede the game requires more skill than Yahtzee, I’m still amazed that they once had a $5,000 buy-in World Series event for Chinese Poker. Numerous pros have admitted to me that once a smart card player learns the basics, only luck separates the players. “It’s addicting,” Mike Matusow tells me. Of course, Mike. Action is addicting.
Exhibit 2: Triple-Draw and its Bastard Child, Badugi
Gus Hansen picked up someone’s discards after he missed a deal in Triple-draw at the Bellagio. Given permission to play them, he called a couple raises, drew five cards, and won a massive pot. My innocence, in which I assumed Deuce-to-seven Triple-draw required maximum skill because it was unfamiliar and had a lot of moving parts, died after hearing a bunch of stories like that.
Which brings us to Badugi, a form of Tripledraw Lowball in which the best hand is A-2-3- 4 of four suits. I’ve yet to hear a claim that this game rewards skill, or that anyone who enjoys it doesn’t have a reputation as an action junkie.
Exhibit 3: Chinese Badugi
Sitting in the Green Room of an ABC pro-am poker tournament in late September, I felt like I dropped in on a crack house. Phil Gordon, Gavin Smith, and a rotating field including Jeff Madsen, Melissa Hayden, and Ali Nejad played a form of Chinese Poker that included a middle Badugi hand. I’m not making this up.
By now, I was too jaded to think this new wrinkle made the game more complex or required greater skill or mental acuity. But if I did, I was permanently dissuaded when the players discovered that they had played several hands without the queen of clubs, which lay behind them in clear view on the floor.
Exhibit 4: Five-Flop Omaha
Even Chinese Badugi might not have been the sickest game to spring from the imagination of professional poker players. That prize goes to Five-Flop Omaha, a game popular with the inmates of the Full Tilt suite during the closing days of the 2006 World Series of Poker.
Rules: Two or more players are dealt four cards. The dealer then deals five flops, five turns, and five rivers. Players settle up for each of the five games on a winner for high and (if there is a 5-card 8-or-better) a winner for low.
Skill element: The only skill I could see was which player could more quickly figure out what cards he needed to root for and against on the last two streets. If the dealer was behind, he would turn the cards slowly while he called out what he needed. His opponent (aka Gavin Smith) would then yell, “Shut up and deal the cards!” Richard “Quiet Lion” Brodie, one of the smartest men I have ever met, even played this game.
Stakes: I never saw it played for less than $100 per side, per hand. If you picked up an awful starting hand, you could lose $1,000 in two minutes, longer if you were dealing and were immune to other players screaming at you to speed up.
Exhibit 5: The Props
So much has been written about proposition bets that the novelty of revealing the legendary props has long passed. Still, the props remind us of the truth of Nick the Greek’s explanation of why he played low-stakes Lowball in Gardena in his final years: “It’s action, isn’t it?”
Phil Gordon behaved like a man under a curse backstage at the ABC tournament. He and Howard Lederer were losing their bet that one of the rounds would be over in less than 64 hands. In one round, four of six players busted in fewer than thirty hands, but the heads-up play was an interminable dance seemingly staged to taunt Gordon and Lederer. In another round, the producer forgot to raise the blinds, leading to an additional round during which no one felt pressured to make a move.
Gordon, however, got healthy on Jeff Madsen. Madsen charmed everyone as a grounded, charismatic young man eager to finish his education, hold on to the money he had won, represent Full Tilt Poker, and prowl for more tournament wins. Phil found the chink in Jeff’s armor, though, and backed him into a $5,000 even-money bet that Madsen would not win a bracelet in 2007. Gavin Smith jumped on the same bet before the window closed.
Nobody is even-money to win a bracelet in 2007. In fact, Ivey, Hellmuth, and Madsen combined are not even-money to win a bracelet in 2007.
Jamie Gold played the event and the bets (or promises of bets) were flying in advance of his arrival. How big an entourage would he bring? Someone told me the over-under was six. I would have bet the under, though the bookie couldn’t be located in time; he had just two people with him.
Gold, who everyone wants to designate as poker’s Bad Guy, seemed like a nice, mildmannered fellow. My only complaint was that he cut in front of me to talk to Shana Hiatt, but I bet anybody would do that, given a chance.
