HORSE Tournament Tips

H.O.R.S.E. is a form of poker commonly played at the high stakes tables of casinos. It consists of rounds of play cycling among:

• Texas Hold 'em,
• Omaha eight or better,
• Razz,
• Seven card Stud, and
• Seven card stud Eight or better.

H.O.R.S.E. is a limit game, including hold 'em. However, in some tournament situations (such as the 2006 World Series of Poker event), the final table is no-limit hold 'em.

C.H.O.R.S.E adds Chowaha or Crazy Pineapple to the mix. This is convenient at such team events as BARGE, when it helps to have as many stud games as flop games. C.H.O.R.S.E.L adds lowball.

HORSE poker tournamentsare a great way of playing poker in different varieties.5 different games of poker are played and all five offer different options of playing style. It is good to play HORSE if you want to get better at certain varieties of poker or if you want to win money. Most players will know one or two games of HORSE and are less skilled in the other parts of the game.

This is where you can make your chips. Play conservative in the beginning when the blinds are low and make notes of your opponents. You will find 1 or 2 playing a lot of hands in the Texas HoldEm game and you will find others who will play more Omaha. Yet another player might be playing most of the RAZZ hands and so on. When after a few rounds of the blinds you know most about the players you can attack the players on the games they are not particularly keen on playing in.

Because the games are all played in the limit version, it becomes important to changes a few basic rules about the starting hands. In the Texas HoldEm game hands like 10-J that are normally hard to play become more playable in the limit version. Hands like 6-6 with which you normally are able to get people of a hand like 10-J for instance become a lot harder to play. If you are on a draw you want to keep the pot as small as possible so that you will not loose too many chips if you don't hit a hand. Unfortunately the same is true if you, for instance, flop top trips. You want to control the betting and make sure you don't loose too many chips if you get overtaken by a straight or a flush on the turn or river.

In Omaha it is important to not focus too much on the low part of the hand. A lot of players will go into any hand with A-2-?-? just because it consists of an A and a deuce for a low hand. The problem with this is that there is not always allow hand in Omaha. A second obstacle is the fact that if an A or a deuce comes down on the board that court does not count anymore, so it is a very precocious hand to play. Yet if you play in small stakes HORSE tournaments you will see this happen a lot.

In RAZZ it is important to look at the opponents hands and to count the cards you are drawing too. It is pretty hard to have a made hand on 5th street so this is where you most of the time have to make the crucial decision to stay in a hand or not. If you hold A-3-5-6-?-? and you see two opponents sitting with a 2 and a 4 each then it is harder for you to hit your outs needed to make a good RAZZ hand. Of course a 7 would give you a low hand as well, but depending on your opponents this might not be good enough. For Seven Card Stud Hi-Lo and Eights or better (Seven Card Stud hi/lo) the same rules apply as for RAZZ. Always be aware of the cards that are out and the cards that could make your hand the best hand.

If you keep these basic rules as a guideline then you should do very well in a nice HORSE tournament.