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"It was easy then to tell... selling out from compromise"
-- Barry Mann & Cynthia Weil
After a few years of one-trick pony fascination with No Limit Holdem, more poker players have begun to experiment with more difficult mixed-game
tournament structures. The most common of these is HORSE.
HORSE stands for Holdem-Omaha/8-Razz-Stud-Eight or Better Stud, and is played with limit betting. HORSE events are considerably
more complex if only because you need to know how to play five different games. But beyond that, the necessity of shifting gears
in multiple ways, and the inclusion of the higher short-term skill games makes HORSE a challenging tournament to master.
Omaha and Stud8 rounds are played High Low. Razz is lowball seven card stud. The Holdem and Stud rounds are high-only
poker. Not only are those different things you have to master, HORSE offers players a lot of ways to play badly!
The "E" aspect of the tournament, HiLo Stud Eight or Better is in itself probably the
most "gear shifting" type of
tournament game. But when included in the mix with the other HORSE games, Stud8 is transformed even more than
normal. Since it is the fifth game played, no matter what you are well into the tournament before you even get to
the first Stud8 round. In normal Stud8 tournaments you should be looking to hit home runs by playing connecting or
suited low hands and those with an Ace when you have a lot of chips relative to the ante and third street bet
(like the first round of a tournament), but when you have few chips in later rounds you should be more happy to
focus on playing straightforward top pair stud poker.
HORSE tends to put a lot of players in an uncomfortable middle position. You are in the fifth round of the tournament, but you
may not have accumulated enough chips to really see a lot of third streets, and you may face a lot of opponents who are immediately
in desperate position, for example only have enough chips to bet up to fifth street, so therefore forced to play mediocre hands
like JJ4. You can't hit homeruns against such hands, but they can take a decent chunk from your stack, while not offering you
that much of a gain if you win. Going from 4000 to 5000 is a lot less helpful than going from 4000 to 3000 in chips is harmful.
An added dimension to the Stud8 rounds is they represent the last round to "get a hand". If you have a
short stack, the smallish ante very likely allows you to
pick a hand with either a pair or three decent low cards -- something reasonable to risk your last chips on, or even your moderate stack on.
This is because after the "E" comes the "H". Holdem is the oddball game in the mix. Four games of high basic skill, relatively slow
pace and low cost are combined with a lightning fast game
with huge blinds and tons of random luck. Players commonly go broke in Holdem in the big blind because they didn't get a reasonable hand to
put their chips in with before then. In all the other games, including Omaha, players are far more likely to go broke playing a hand they
choose to play. The antes of the three (slower) stud games are puny in comparison to the big blind whipping around the table in Holdem.
In the other games players look to play strong hands. In Holdem, players look to avoid being blinded into oblivion.
While poor players tend to think HORSE events are all about the multi-card non-Holdem games, experienced players know their
fate in a HORSE tournaments will normally be determined by the final Holdem round they play. The blinds in the Holdem rounds
are the key to every HORSE tournament, even when your opponents are completely clueless about how to play the non-Holdem games.
This is especially true in online HORSE tournaments. You can easily play three times as many Holdem hands in the same time span as
one of the other games. You must either accumulate chips in the Holdem rounds, or if your opponents are weaker at the other games
(as is common) fight to break even in the Holdem just so you earn the privilege of playing against them in the other games.
The title of this article is a bit deceptive, because HORSE strategy is all about the Hold'em rounds. If you are a sensible player,
the four slower skill games can take care of themselves. In the other four games you'll play hands you want to play, based upon
your chip stack. In the other four games you'll likely build your stack, or get eliminated, playing a hand you wanted to play.
The structure of the
PokerStars World Championship of Online Poker
went from players anteing 20,000 each hand, to a player having to put in 150,000 and 75,000 in consecutive hands to simply pay the
big and small Texas Hold'em blinds. If you are sitting there with a 450,000 stack, you have a lot of play just anteing 20,000 a hand,
but if you have to put in half your stack in due the blinds, and hands are taking about twenty seconds, holy cow, we better start
hoping we get a "monster" like KT or A5.
HORSE tournaments primarily boil down to the transition from Stud8 to Holdem. The other three games are a lot like simple
ring game poker... play good hands, make good moves,
don't be an idiot. The last half of the Stud8 round if you have short or middling chips, and the Holdem rounds for everybody, are the
two strategic aspects of the tournament that really matter. No matter what game you are playing, a part of your brain should always be
thinking "I have to get enough chips to be able to really play that next Holdem round" (as opposed to just desperately making
steal attempts or going all in because the blinds are so huge).
You may happen to be eliminated, or even build a big stack, in the other games, but if you are going to
win, HORSE
tournaments are always about the Holdem.
Also see
Tournament Poker Strategy and
Making Money Playing Tournament Poker
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