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Old 11-10-2005, 02:26 AM
MarkGritter MarkGritter is offline
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Join Date: Jan 2005
Location: Eagan, MN
Posts: 244
Default Re: Manila.. who\'s played it??

Here are a couple of rule pages:

http://www.gambling-poker.com/manila_poker.html
http://www.pokertips.org/variants/article/99.php

Played with a stripped deck, 7s and higher. Two downcards + one community card before the first round of betting. 4 additional rounds of betting after each of 4 more community cards. Best hand using three community cards wins (i.e., like Omaha Hi). Flushes beat full houses.

Let me ramble for a bit here:

The inversion of flushes and full houses (due to the stripped deck) is interesting, I'm kind of curious how that affects the strength of suited hands. Probably decreased because they are harder to make.

The two-card requirement makes bare aces much less worthwhile, so low suited aces are probably junk hands even cheap.

Two-pair hands are somewhat less likely to be counterfeited because your opponent can't play a bare kicker. Or does the stripped deck make it more likely?

The cost to see community cards is much increased. Instead of paying 1 small bet to see the first three cards you must pay 2 SB. This probably means that suitedness/connectedness is much less valuable because you cannot 'flop' a monster draw. You may have to play in a somewhat stud-like fashion and fold '4th street' (2nd round) fairly often.

On the other hand, you do get to see a community card for free. Seeing a set in the first round has to be worth something. Having your opponent see his set vs. your AA is not so good.

All in all, I think this game probably has to be played fairly tightly, I don't see a lot of value in suited connectors or anything worse than a top pair hand. Draws are expensive. Kings or queens can probably be thrown away if there's an ace up on the first round of betting. Three to a straight flush might be playable if you can see 4th street cheaply.
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