Short Deck Poker Is Long on Excitement at partypoker
It would be foolish nowadays to think that real money online poker might run out of ideas and leave the global poker community’s never-ending thirst for thrills and spills and rollercoaster rides - and whatever other cliches we justifiably use to describe this great game - at the virtual tables wanting. Technology has enabled online poker providers to continually improve and add to their offering. The transformation of Sit & Go games, for example, from the original one-paced fare of yesteryear to the action-packed jackpot generators we see today is one such example, while even online poker tournaments now come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, with Bounty tournaments the latest incredibly popular trend.
And there’s more...
Short Deck poker has in recent years been a popular way for highrollers to let off steam by bandying around nosebleed sums of money via hands that come from a deck with lowest cards simply taken out of play. Part of the attraction is that, thanks to there being a reduced deck of only 36 cards, hand rankings differ slightly - but, of course, significantly! - and therefore require a few key tweaks in terms of strategy.
In their constant efforts to make poker the ultimate accessible-to-all game, partypoker have made sure that even this seemingly big money variant can be enjoyed by everyone, regardless of the size of their bankroll. To this end, you can experience Short Deck poker - also known as (simply) 6+ or Six Plus Hold’em - from as little as a $2 buy-in at partypoker!
Short Deck Poker: How It Works
The best variants tend to be played along almost - but not quite - the same lines as the traditional, conventional version, and Short Deck poker is typical. Removing all the twos, threes, fours and fives from the deck changes the parameters enough to in turn change the hand rankings, which are worth noting:
Short Deck hand rankings
- Royal Flush
- Straight Flush
- 4 of a kind
- Flush
- Full House
- Straight
- 3 of a kind
- 2 pair
- 1 pair
- High Card
First, if you don’t spot the difference between the above list and conventional Texas Hold'em hand rankings, you’re probably not yet ready to dive into the choppy waters of Short Deck games...
Short Deck poker fits perfectly into our modern world of instant gratification because the 36-card deck of course generates strong hands more often than is usual in standard Hold’em games. Note also that because there’s more action, more players at the table will be involved in pots, thus adding to the intensity and leading to pots playing deeper.
Removal of chips
An unusual and initially counter-intuitive feature of Short Deck games is that, with this version, players who generate a sufficiently big stack are allowed to remove chips from the table and then continue to play! This can be a little confusing when you’re new to the game, but partypoker has done a great job of implementing the configurations to streamline chip removal when the feature is enabled.
To sum up, here are the important differences between Short Deck and standard Texas Hold’em:
- All cards valued below 6 are removed
- All players must post an ante, with only the player on the button posting an additional ante (or button ante)
- A Flush beats a Full House (yes - it can take some getting used to)
- Aces still play both high or low, but A6789 is the lowest straight due to the absence of all the cards from 2 to 5. Meanwhile, TJQKA remains the highest straight.
- Given the above, Ah 6h 7h 8h 9h would be a low straight flush.
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Good luck at the tables, and have fun!
