If you like playing poker and are a constant at Texas hold 'em tables, you may consider learning a new game to widen your playing abilities. Additionally, the more games you learn, the quicker you can participate in HORSE tournaments which are common fun alternatives to standard Hold 'em tournaments given they are a change of pace and a much more aggressive quick tournament than Hold 'em. One game that composes HORSE but will probably be fairly new to you as it is not so common in the casinos and in neighborhood poker tournaments is Razz. Razz is played with the same traditional 2-8 players, but the objective is to have the lowest set of cards at the end to win the pot. After this point, RAZZ quickly differentiates from standard poker so pay close attention to the instructions if you want to learn.
First off in Razz, there are no straights or flushes, and remember that you do not want the high hand, so any pairs, even if they are high pairs, are going to count against you in the end. Therefore, you will have to kick that initial rise in anticipation after being dealt a pocket pair, because for once, you don't want them. In Razz, the lowest card is an Ace as it counts as a one, so having one in your hole is a good thing, and if you have to have a pair, a pair of aces is the way to go, so you can still anticipate being dealt a pocket ACE.
As the game begins, each player is dealt their hole, two cards face down. At this point each player will also be dealt on card face up on the table. From this point, the betting commences with the player with the highest face up card has to begin the betting. This is similar to playing with blinds because they are forced to begin bidding, but unlike traditional poker games, if the cards randomly deal in a certain manner, the same person may be forced to start the bidding every round. This is done so that the highest card holder in the first round is never allowed to fold out from the beginning, thus making the game more interesting as strategy has to be employed in a lot greater detail to win a hand.
Now you are considered to have three cards, and after the betting has closed, the fourth card will be dealt face up and betting will commence in the same format. All regular rules of poker, betting, folding, and checking are in place. Next comes the fifth and the sixth deals, but the difference is, not the player who is dealt the lowest card begins the bidding. Finally the seventh card is dealt and after a round of betting players lay down their two hole cards to see who wins the pot with the lowest pot. While it may be confusing at first, after a few rounds you should be able to catch on and have a great deal of fun.
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