Anaconda/Pass The Trash

[Al Mirpuri]

Anaconda or Pass The Trash (call it what you will but you are dealt seven cards pass three, then two and finally one card to the person on your left with rounds of betting before each pass and one also after the final pass) is interesting if a little time consuming. Obviously, it could not be played for a lot of money because of the problem of collusion (and just the fact that some player will get a schmuck on his right passing him pairs and suited connectors and you won't). However, has anyone played this for relatively high stakes?

[Aragorn]

Never played it for high stakes, but it used to be my favorite game in low-stakes home games. That is until we started playing Omaha with two flops.

[Buzz]

"That is until we started playing Omaha with two flops.

Aragon - Omaha with <font color="red">two</font> flops?

Sounds interesting. Tell us more.

As for Anaconda, used to be my favorite home game too - but it doesn't take long for everyone to figure out that you need a wheel to play for low and a full house or better for high - and then the game has little or no action. And collusion between friends sitting next to each other is rampant.

Buzz

[Al Mirpuri]

Hold'em can be dealt with two flops as well. Two sets of fourth and fifth street are dealt. Whoever has the best hand with communal cards set one wins half the pot, whoever has the best hand with communal cards set two wins half the pot. Sometimes this is the same player, sometimes not. Never played it but you should probably think of it as Hi-Lo with the idea being to 'scoop' that is win both sets of communal cards.

[Phat Mack]

I've seen $1000 pots in anaconda. The game was played with only one pass of three cards, then two were discarded and the remaining five were rolled as in 5stud. An interesting feature of this game was that on the first hand the pass was to the player on your left, on the second hand you passed two to your left, third hand three to you left, etc. Very good home game comprised mainly of dentists, if I remember correcctly.

[StratDiamond]

I was at a crazy home game the other day where we played "ultimate Omaha" with 5 flops (and turns, river.) Best high and low hand using any of the flops won.

They rolled the flops 1 card at a time until the end, then bet, then declared high or low, then bet again. 8 rounds of betting with lots of raising going on. 5 people stayed in to the end.

Crazy

[Ed Miller]

Wow... so much for small pairs... good luck flopping a set on both boards.

[Al Mirpuri]

You seem to be conflating two different versions of the game in your post. The game with the one pass of three and discard of two, I have seen called Screwy Louey in Scarne (?) though the names seem to be interchangable. Impressed by the $1000 pot. Was it not murder seeing some fool make somebody else's hand, hand after hand?

[crockpot]

during a boring home poker game one night, we invented an omaha variant called Goodfield (named after the 500-person hometown of one of our members).

the original rules simply stated that it was omaha hi-lo with no qualifier, except that each person gets eight cards and has to split them into two four-card omaha hands to start the deal. you get control over both hands, and you can use the same hand for high and low or one for each. the only real skill in this game was splitting hands well.

to make the game more digestable, we added a few caveats: we eliminated the pre-flop betting round, added an 8-or-better qualifier to prevent A234 or similar hands from soaking the pot since they were dealt much too frequently. also, we only dealt the game when exactly five players were in, since the game isn't very good with any other number.

i don't really recommend you introduce this into your poker game, as the good players just learn never to put any money in on a non-nut hand, and to fold the nut low to avoid quartering, which makes it a pretty boring ordeal. i wonder if it would work with six cards split into two three card hands (sort of a cross between Goodfield and the british game of Irish). i'll have to try that next time.

[crockpot]

remember when one of ub's big selling points was the 'revolutionary' double-flop hold 'em game? do they even have that game running any more except for that one play money table?

[Phat Mack]

You seem to be conflating two different versions of the game in your post.

It was dealer's choice; dealer called a whole round. There was only one pass, but the pass was to a different player for each hand of the round.

Buzz's post reminded me that another favorite at this game was Push, where collusion was harder to circumvent, but was so ingrained into the structure of the game, and so much a part of the strategy, that I enjoyed playing it.

I don't see it much any more, but while waiting for a game to make I used to play a lot of knock poker. Collusion, especially in undercutting the knocker, was one of the primary tactics of the game. I used to hate playing knock poker with lousy colluders.

[Al Mirpuri]

We, too, used to play a lot of 7 card push. However, we started off with the pushing on 3rd street. It had the same inherent fault as Anaconda- some fool would push pairs and flushes onto a player and you would have someone pushing sensibly to you. Collusion, of course, is always a problem. Not that we had any cheats in our home games, as it was friends only. I'm just making a general point about collusion.