Juicy Stakes Poker offers three main poker variations with quite a bit of variation within the variations! It’s a lot less complicated than it sounds. We offer a few variations of Texas Hold’em, mainly in the way the betting limits are defined. We also offer regular Omaha and Omaha Hi-Lo.
Finally, we offer gaming in Teresina which is the Italian version of Stud Poker.
Let’s take a quick look at these poker variations. But first…
Are There Other Variations of Poker?
Well, there are actually a lot of variations of poker! Anyone who has played poker with friends in a game where the dealer chooses the variation has probably played many variations of poker! Here are a few:
- Deuces wild
- Cincinnati
- Five card stud
- Seven card stud
- Draw
- Guts
- Hi-lo
Juicy Stakes Poker offers games and tournaments in Texas Hold’em, Omaha Hi, Omaha Hi-Lo, and Stud.
We All Know the Basics of Texas Hold’em
This poker variation has had a meteoric rise in just a few decades. For many years it was played in the oil fields of Western Texas. Then it was brought to Las Vegas by Amarillo Slim, Doyle Brunson, and…
Within a very few years, it had become THE game of poker. Texas Hold’em is the form of poker played at the World Series of Poker. Hold’em , by itself, was not the single most important reason for the meteoric rise in the World Series of Poker. The win by Chris Moneymaker made thousands, perhaps millions, of poker players believe that they too could win or do well at the World Series of Poker.
More importantly, from our point of view, is that Chris Moneymaker qualified to play in the World Series of Poker by winning an online poker tournament!
So, we have finally reached the point where we can talk about the other variations of poker in which we run tournaments.
Omaha Hi
The biggest difference between Texas Hold’em and Omaha Hi is that in Omaha, the players get four hole cards and there are five community cards. The players make their best hand from two of their hole cards and three of the community cards.
There are many instances where a player would have a better hand by using more of the cards he or she has in the hole and fewer community cards or vice versa! For Texas Hold’em players, this is the most important change they have to think about as they value their hand.
There is More Hidden Information in Omaha
We can see immediately that with twice as much information unavailable to competitors, the value of hands has to be reconsidered. That means that borderline hands have to be better in Omaha than they have to be in Hold’em.
Omaha was developed only in 1982 by a great poker player, Robert Turner, who introduced it at the Golden Nugget in Las Vegas in 1982.
Omaha Has Nine Cards Instead of Seven
This is extraordinarily important! It means that, in theory, there will be more high hands than in Hold’em. However, there could be a major problem with a full house. If there is three of a kind on the board, all players have access to it and someone might have a better full house as a result!
If you have a pair on the board and that card in your hand, you can also make a full house by pairing a community card with a card from your hand.
Like Hold’em Omaha Has Blinds
The betting structure in Omaha is the same as the betting structure in Hold’em. The streets are the same and so on.
The key strategy is to understand the revised value of hands given that each player has nine cards to form a hand.
Omaha Hi-Lo is Even More Challenging
In Omaha Hi-Lo, players compete to have the highest hand or the lowest hand. If there is a qualifying low hand, the two hands split the pot. If there is no qualifying low hand, the high hand wins the entire pot.
First of all, a borderline hand has to be better in this variation than in Omaha Hi or Texas Hold’em because players are expecting to split the pot.
The low hand has to have five cards that are 8 or below with an ace qualifying as either a low card or as a high card. A straight or a flush does not affect the stays of a low hand so a good low hand that is also a straight or flush is very powerful.
Players are also allowed to use different combinations of hole cards and community cards to form the high and low hands.
Telesina
This is the Italian version of five card stud poker. The number of the lowest card is derived by subtracting the number of players from the number 11. So, if there are four players, the game is played with the cards from 7 to Ace, and so on.
First of all, if there are few players at the table, there will be more chances for a player to get a powerful hand. It clearly demonstrates that a borderline hand has to be much better than in Omaha or Hold’em.
Players put in an ante. There are no blinds in this variation. The dealer deals one card down and one card up and the highest card starts the betting. The dealer deals one card three more times so that each player has four cards showing and one card in the hole.
There is a major change in hand ranks in Telesina. A flush is considered better than a full house. It is harder to end up with a flush than a full house because some cards of the same suit have been removed from the deck. In the example we gave above, if the game is played with the cards from 7 to Ace, there only eight cards with which to form a flush but with the ranks from 7 to Ace there are excellent chances to pair up cards or get three of a kind or to do both!
Join Juicy Stakes Poker!
We offer great poker! It really that simple! We also offer many stakes levels. New players should start at low stakes levels. This allows them to gain important experience at very little risk to their bankroll.
Although Texas Hold’em has become the go to poker variation, a lot of players discover that they enjoy Omaha or Telesina even more!
Each game has its own challenges and some players seem to better process the idiosyncrasies of one variation over the others! Great poker players are made, not born.
JOIN JUICY STAKES POKER NOW!
