This Game Sucks!

By Daniel Negreanu

How often have you heard this expression? You are happily playing in your $15-$30 stud game when a hold'em player decides to sit down in your "dumb" game.

"This game is like a crapshoot," he'll say. "One guy starts with aces, and loses to nines and fours. Happens all the time in this dumb game, but not in hold'em."

I have seen this scenario more than a few times - a hold'em player trying Omaha high-low, a stud high-low expert playing hold'em, a no-limit hold'em player playing limit hold'em, and so on. Oftentimes the player will go out of his way to let you know how stupid he thinks the game is that you're playing. He'll usually do this after losing a couple of hands, sometimes due to bad luck but more often due to bad play or a lack of fundamental knowledge.

I know "that guy," because I once was "that guy." I was not quite as bad as I described, but I have found myself frustrated by a new game in the past. In fact, it's happened several times, starting when I used to play in home games.

Back then, my favorite games were Vanunu (seven-card stud, high-low, roll your own all the way, no qualifier, pitch and a buy on the end, with declare) and Ponzi (five in your hand, five community cards turned over one at a time, high-low, 8 or better for low, must bet with declare) - a mouthful, to say the least!

Those games were fun, and had lots of action and very big pots. We played dealer's choice, so once in a while someone would call hold'em and I'd go to sleep. "What a stupid game," I thought. "There's no action in this game." Little did I know at the time that I would learn to love hold'em and play it almost exclusively for six years.

Then I was introduced to a new game, Omaha high-low. It was another dumb game, as far as I was concerned. "Any game in which you can't bluff is a dumb game," or so I thought. You see, I was showing my true ignorance, passing judgments about a game I didn't understand. Poor results and silly assumptions led me to believe there was little skill required to play the game well. It was a "nut-nut" game that didn't suit my style.

Then, I gave the game a chance. I spent more time playing it in side games and tournaments, and eventually found that you could bluff in Omaha high-low. I basically came to realize that there was more to the game than I'd first thought. So, in the end, this "dumb" game turned out to be my new favorite game.

Unfortunately, my ignorance didn't stop there. Omaha high-low was a game of skill because you could read hands, move people off better hands, and so on. But there was no skill in games like seven-card stud, that I could see. Aces never won and everybody chased all the way to the river. Whoever caught lucky, won - what a dumb game.

Of course, none of that is true at all, which I eventually realized. Seven-card stud is a fascinating game with added variables that you won't find in flop games. Yes, it's true that aces won't win as often in stud as they will in hold'em, but so what? As long as you understand this and make the necessary adjustments, it shouldn't matter to you at all.

Then, finally, there was pot-limit Omaha. By the time I was introduced to this game, I'd already learned that it wasn't the game, any game, that was dumb. I finally understood that my frustration with any new game came from not understanding its nuances. Once I gave a new game a chance and tried to learn it rather than pout like a baby, it usually became pretty exciting to me.

But all of that said, I wasn't sure it applied to pot-limit Omaha. I never liked the game. All I ever heard were horror stories, like, "I flopped top set and the nut-flush draw, turned the other nut-flush draw, had a made straight with a higher straight draw, we got all the money in ... and I got it beat. Amazing."

These stories scared me into wondering, "What do you need to win a pot in this game?" Then, I went on to watch guys like Dave "Devilfish" Ulliott shove all of his money in on the turn on a complete bluff, or Phil Ivey fold one hand an hour and rake in pot after pot, and wonder, "What in the world are they doing?" For some reason, the game just didn't sink in for me. I just didn't get it.

However, learning from past experiences, I decided not to give up and give the game a chance. I decided that I'd have to watch guys like Devilfish and Ivey and see if I could pick up on what they were doing. I'm not saying I figured either of them out, but the picture gradually became clearer. But I still had little confidence in my ability to play the game well, despite spending ample time studying it.

Then, I achieved a breakthrough. At the L.A. Poker Classic in February, I won my first pot-limit Omaha event ever, and had a great time doing it. I was the chip leader from the very first hand to the end of the tournament - it was an amazing rush. For most of the day, T.J. Cloutier was at my table, and I was in awe of his play. He was really playing fantastic poker, and I was getting free lessons simply by watching him play. As luck would have it, I would have to pass my final exam that night heads up against the master himself. We played fast and furious poker for a little while, and finally when all the money went in, I caught a lucky river card and won $49,000.

Had I been stubborn and simply dismissed the game as an uninteresting form of poker, I never would have been able to understand the complexity of it. If you take anything away from this column, it should be this: Just because you don't like or understand a game doesn't mean it can't be fascinating to others. In fact, if you give it a chance, you may be pleasantly surprised to find that you too are fascinated by it.

If you don't listen well and/or question your own thoughts about the game, you will never grow as a poker player. To achieve true poker success, you must be able to think outside the box, be open to anything, and be willing to change your views if they prove to be incorrect.