Blackjack Variations
I’ve got a couple more blackjack variations to let you know about, both of which you can find at various casinos around the world, although neither of which are particularly common or easy to come by.
The first one is something you’d probably expect to find at the other side of the casino at the sports gambling pit, but it’s present right here at the blackjack online table. And it’s called over/under 13. This little side game is actually growing in popularity in the United States’ most famous gambling hot spots of Vegas and Atlantic City, so you might have seen it already, or can expect to see it available the next time you hit the bright lights.
What this “side bet” allows you to do is put separate money on whether your first two cards will add up to be more than 14 or fewer than 13. You can bet on either side. A couple of things that right off the bat work to your disadvantage, though. First, Aces are always worth one (that hurts at least for the over), and the dealer wins if you hit 13 on the nose. The payoff is even money, which really just makes me shrug my shoulder into a world of gambling indifference. It’s like playing casino war. Really, why bother? But some people love it since it’s becoming more popular. And if the casinos can make money off the “side show”, you can bet you’ll find it somewhere to play.
Variation number two is commonly called Double Exposure. At first, this might appear to be a player’s dream. You play against a dealer who shows no hidden cards at any point throughout the hand. That’s right, both his first two cards are face-up. Huge advantage for the player, right? Eh, sort of. There’s no push in this game, you lose every tie. Plus, you get no bonus payoff at all for scoring a blackjack strategy (not that you did any of the work to get that hand anyway). As you can imagine, how you perfect your strategy factors greatly from standard 6-8 deck blackjack.
So those are a couple “jokers” so to speak that you’ll find at the tables to spice up a game that doesn’t need any more seasoning that it already has. But if trying something new and multi-tasking your chips is your kinda thing, you’ll no doubt enjoy these.
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Omaha Hi/Lo Strategy
Omaha Hi/Lo has slowly been becoming the most popular Omaha Poker game played in online poker rooms, like FullTilt Poker, and it’s a great game for action junkie poker players like me. If you enjoy playing in a lot of hands and you enjoy betting a lot then you should be able to see quite a bit of success at the Omaha Hi/Lo tables. Typically you should play the low limit tables because the action gets really expensive even at the $1/$2 table.
Almost any starting hand has a chance in Omaha Hi/Lo although you definitely don’t want to play every hand. Generally a good idea is to play hands where you have two different sets of suited cards or you have two high cards and two low cards. Since you can win half the pot by having the lowest hand possible then you will be able to play a lot more pots when you have low cards. Often a low hand can win both pots by hitting a straight or something along those lines as well so always play hands with low cards.
When you have pairs in your hand I would recommend folding them because the chances of winning the pot are fairly slim I’ve found over the past year. One risk you run when you’re playing Omaha Hi/Lo is that you can be playing to win the low pot and end up splitting it with another opponent which typically means you’ll lose money in the hand which isn’t good. It’s also smart to note that you can win both the high and low hand by using different cards in your hand which means you can use all four cards potentially to make a high hand and a low hand. You always need to use two cards to make your high hand and low hand, but when you’re playing Omaha Hi/Lo you can use two different cards to make each hand.
A lot of players will bluff when you’re playing this game and bet big due to the fact most players at FullTiltPoker.com will fold, but you can’t be scared of big bets. If you’re worried about betting too much in a hand then you should only join the poker table with an amount you won’t be worried about pushing all-in to the pot. If you’re going for the high hand you should typically make sure you have a straight or flush depending on what’s on the board, of course anything better is a plus, but anything worse will typically not win in this game.
In order to qualify for the low hand you need to use 2 of your cards and 3 community cards every time and the hand needs to have 5 cards lower then 8 without any pairs. The best low hand you can potentially have when playing Omaha Hi/Lo is A-2-3-4-5. The best low hand is by judging the last card which in the above example would be 5. In the following example take a close look at it because it’s important. If you have A-2-4-5-8 and your opponent has 2-3-4-5-7 then you would lose because your highest card is an 8 and your opponent’s is 7.
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