Poker Articles

Declaring Both Ways in a High-Low Game
By Michael Wiesenberg

Since probably more poker players are found in home games than in cardrooms, let me address an issue of concern mainly to home game players. Of course, there is a lot of overlap, so many of you who play in cardrooms also play in home games.

High-low declare is popular in home games, but not found much in cardrooms, where high-low split games are usually played with what is called "cards speak," that is, the house dealer reads all the hands at the showdown and determines which wins the high half and which the low. The way it usually works in home games is there is a declaration, that is, the use of chips or voice to indicate whether players are going for high, low, or both. In games with a declaration, the pot is split between the holder of the highest hand who declares high and holder of the lowest hand who declares low. This makes it theoretically possible for the highest hand to win low and the lowest hand to win high. I say "theoretically," because more common is a hand that would normally be in contention for only one direction (that is, high or low) to declare and win the other direction--and even that occurrence is pretty rare. In home games, there usually are no qualifiers for either high or low, thus a player can win half a pot for which her hand might not otherwise qualify by making a clever (or lucky) strategic situation.

Obviously, a problem arises only when a player declaring both ways (that is, both high and low, or what is sometimes called a swing hand, scoop hand, scooper, or hog hand) does not clearly win both ways. If the player who so declares clearly has the best hand for high and the best hand for low, he certainly should get the entire pot by anyone’s rules. He also clearly always should get the whole pot in one situation in which he does not have the best hand for high or the best hand for low. This is the situation in which the holder of the best hand for low does not declare low, but declares high instead (for whatever reason, such as mistakenly thinking that she does not actually have the best low hand, or even inadvertently declaring the wrong way, such as by forgetting how many chips one puts in one’s hand to declare that way) and does not have the best hand for high, or, similarly, the situation in which the holder of the best hand for high declares low and does not have the best hand for low.

If the player who declares both ways loses either way, most private games rule that that player loses all claim to the pot. The problem arises in two areas: One, how much, if any, of the pot is a high-low declarer entitled to who ties either high or low or both? Two, once the high-low declarer is eliminated from contention for a pot, how is the remainder of the pot split?

If the player who declares both ways ties either way, most private games in which high-low declare is played rule that that player loses all claim to the pot. One scribe who used to write about home games described what happens in his games. When a player declares for both and, say, wins high and ties low, he gets three-quarters of the pot (the high half and half the low half).

I don’t agree with this policy. I think it penalizes the intelligent poker player for one of his best abilities, that of being able to make the correct decision in a difficult situation. The easier you make it for a player to win by declaring both ways, the more players will make such decisions. Eventually it gets to the point that there is no penalty at all for declaring both ways, and any hand with the remotest possibility of winning both ways will be declared both ways. At that point, all the skill disappears from the declaration, and the game degenerates to "cards speak," or essentially, no declare, which is a decidedly less skillful game.

From there, it is a short step from not penalizing a declarer for tying one direction or both to not penalizing a declarer for losing a direction. As long as he wins (or ties!) one direction, one might argue that the player is entitled to a corresponding percentage of the pot.

Well, perhaps that is a bit of an exaggeration; nonetheless, I believe that it should be the rule that a player declaring both ways loses all claim to the pot if he ties either way. For example, if you have a five-high straight flush in five-card stud high-low-split, and another player is showing ace-2-3-4 of mixed suits, it takes a lot of guts to declare both ways knowing that you can lose the whole pot if that opponent has a five in the hole. A timid player might declare high only in this situation, being content with a sure half of the pot. A clever player might have a tell on the holder of the potential wheel, and either know that that player does not have a five in the hole, and declare both ways confidently, or divine that the player does have that five, and wisely declare high only. This takes the ability to read tells and bluffs to new levels.

Debate has also arisen over who is entitled to the pot that the swing hand doesn’t get by losing claim to the pot for whatever reason. It is my contention that such a forfeited pot should be split between the remaining highest and lowest hands. This method may not seem fair to some, but I think that since the high-low hand is eliminated completely, the pot ought to be split in such a way as if the hand that declared both ways were never involved at all. When a full house beats a low straight that declares high-low, the full house should not now get the whole pot if there is any player who has declared low, even though no one has a hand that actually beats the swing hand for low. It took no cleverness on the part of the full house to have the winning high hand, not enough cleverness, at any rate, to warrant winning the whole pot. Had the high-low declarer been a bit cleverer, however, he might have seen he was beat for one way, and declared only the other way instead of both. It would take great cleverness on the part of a declarer for low who knew he was beat by the swing hand yet stayed in knowing that the holder of the small straight would declare both ways and lose high to the obvious (obvious to him: the good player holding the low hand he knew to be second-best) full house, and that clever player should be rewarded with half the pot.

It is always a risk to declare high-low, and rightly so. If a player has a potential both-way hand, but is fearful, it should not be made easy for him to go both ways. Otherwise, anyone with such a hand would always declare both ways, because the only penalty for so doing would only be not getting the whole pot. This would lead to anyone with such a hand always automatically declaring both ways. In the must-clearly-win-both-ways-when-declaring-both-ways games, it is a great strategy decision both how to declare with a potential scoop hand and, perhaps even more of a coup, for someone holding a hand that might not otherwise have a chance of winning, to be clever enough to stay on the chance that the both-ways hand would be eliminated.

David Sklansky described high-low seven stud declare in Doyle Brunson’s Super System: "The art of declaring is one of the most important, if not the most important part of the game. It’s so important that if I’m playing against mediocre players, not real wild loose players but just mediocre players, I could probably win playing every single hand and never folding." An exaggeration, perhaps, but I think it’s close to the truth.