Having already dealt with hand rankings and the starting hands in parts 1 and 2, it’s time to turn to the mathematical side of the game and see just how much difference the 36-card deck makes to pot odds.

'6+ is an exciting poker variant that often produces big hands and a lot of action', said Chris Straghalis, Director of Poker Product at PokerStars.

1. Although Six Plus Hold'em is for the most part played as the traditional Hold'em in terms of streets, the main difference comes on the river, at least in some variations of the game, when, instead of dealing a community card, every player is dealt one extra card.
2. If you’re starting with Six Plus poker and want to be able to quickly calculate your odds on the flop and/or the turn, there is a very handy rule you can use. In standard Hold’em, we have the rule of 2 and 4. In Short Deck, there is the Rule of 6 and 3. On the flop: count your outs and multiply the number by 6.
3. PokerStars appears to be bringing the popular new poker variant, Six Plus Hold’em or Short Deck Poker, to its platform soon, according to a report at PokerFuse. In recent months, the game has gained some traction in cash games and on the tournament scene in southeast Asia among high rollers.
4. Six Plus Hold'em is an action-packed variation of Texas Hold'em that is mainly being played in the high stakes casinos of Macau, the Chinese equivalent to Las Vegas. In Six Plus Hold'em, the amount of cards in the game is reduced and the hand ranking adjusted.

Let’s start with an open example:

Example 1

Six plus Hold’em ($10/20, 6-handed)

Hero:910

Villain:QQ

Villain opens in seat 1 for $50, everyone else folds and you call in the BB. Pot = $110

Flop:7KA

Hero checks and Villain continuation bets$55, half the pot, making the pot$165 (let’s not discuss whether it’s a good play or not - I’m trying to make the maths simple for us all!)

We don’t know what the villain has, but we’re pretty sure we are only drawing to the flush here, so it comes down to pot odds whether we call or not (let’s ignore a speculative re-raise in this scenario!)

There are only nine spades in the deck in total (remember that the 2,3,4 and 5 are all out of play) and five of them are split between the board, our hand and our opponent’s hand. We don’t know that he has the Qs, so that’s only four in play for our purposes – so five cards left to draw to.

So, 5 of the 31 cards unknown to us will likely win, which is about a 17% chance of hitting, and we have two attempts at hitting it, so roughly 34%.

The other way of calculating this is to count one out, which is one in 31 = 3.2%, so…

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In this instance, we are being offered 3-1 on the pot, and we are 2-1 to win, so it’s an easy call. Our flush draw will come in more often than not.

So, just as we saw in Part 2 that we are twice as likely to receive any particular starting hand, so the unofficial ‘Rule of 4 & 2’ changes and becomes…..the ‘Rule of 2&1’. Our %’s are easy to calculate quickly, if not 100% accurately.

With two cards to come in Texas Hold’em, we multiply our outs by four, if only the river is left then times by two. In Six Plus 2x and 1x is the easy way.

Also useful to note is if we had reason to believe our opponent was on trips, then his quite realistic chances of hitting a full house would have to be factored in were we playing Texas Hold’em – but in Six Plus a Flush beats a Full House anyway, so it wouldn’t be an issue. A difference, and a crucial one.

Let’s try another example, and see how straights play with pot odds and outs.

Example 2

Six plus Hold’em ($10/20, 6-handed)

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Hero:910

Villain:QQ

Villain opens in seat 1 for $50, everyone else folds and you call in the BB. Pot = $110

Flop:78K

Hero checks and Villain c-bets $55, half the pot, making the pot $165 (again, keeping the maths simple)

So, first of all we have ‘nothing’ except an open-ended straight draw, and we can consider our opponent to have something better than this, so again we are drawing to win.

We have eight outs (the four 6’s and the 4 Jacks) and there are again 31 unknown cards, so roughly 26%. And we have the turn and river to hit them. So, using the ‘guesstimator’ rule of ‘2 & 1’ for practical play, we can say 2 x 26%=52% chance of hitting.

Just to check this….

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This is even clearer than example one when it comes to pot odds: 3-1 pot odds and even money on a win with your straight.

However, if you factor in that your opponent might have trips – which now beats a straight in Six Plus Holdem, it brings the odds down a bit - though you’d have to actually ‘know’ he was on trips to let it affect your play here.

The even more interesting aspect which this brings up, as pointed out on PokerVIP, is that:

Basically, if you know that your opponent doesn’t have trips or better, you can just keep on raising, because if you have any kind of fold equity, you’re going to profit in the long run; and when you do get called, it’s as close to a flip as it will ever be, provided you’re not drawing dead.”

6 Plus Poker Strategy

OK, so these are the basics regarding pot odds and outs –for deeper strategy I refer you back to our earlier link where you can find all sorts of goodies which explain the differences in more details: stacking off, 3-betting ranges and much more.

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