What game has the greatest skill/luck ratio?

[Iceman]

[ QUOTE ]
I'm curious as to why everyone is putting PLO ahead of PLO8.

I've always been told that PLO8 is the game where mediocre players are separated from their chips the quickest.

[/ QUOTE ]

A bad call in PLO will often be drawing dead or very nearly dead, while in PLO-8 really strong two-way hands are very rare so it's easy for a bad call to get half the pot.

Overly tight play is a serious error in PLO and will result in you getting minimal action on your strong hands as well as being constantly bluffed out of pots when scare cards hit. In PLO-8, it's much harder to steal pots when you know someone almost certainly caught some part of the board in one direction, and even total rocks can get action from people going for the other side.

[Iceman]

[ QUOTE ]
I'd have to say for long term success:

1.) PLHE
2.) NL 2/7 3 Draw
3.) NLHE

[/ QUOTE ]

NL holdem is better than PL holdem against really bad players who massively overbet pots with mediocre hands.

[ QUOTE ]
4.) PLO
5.) PLO8
6.) 7S
7.) 7S8
8.) LHE
8.) NLO
9.) NLO8
10.) L Omaha
11.) L O8

[/ QUOTE ]

Limit Omaha-8 has a higher skill/luck ratio than limit stud and limit holdem, even if it doesn't seem that way. Once the flop comes down, loose callers in Omaha-8 are often drawing dead or close to it, while reasonable hands in stud run much closer in value on later streets. As for holdem, only AA and KK are really much better than other legitimate hands, so in a game with a lot of preflop raising the luck factor will be very high.

[ QUOTE ]
I would put limit 2/7 in there and I don't like NL Omaha, but lowball triple draw can't be played limit. It just can't. The game too shorthanded and there are too many cards. Almost any game would be dead or too heavily swingy as any form of Stud would be.

[/ QUOTE ]

Actually, I think TDL is a good limit game (just play it with a double deck if you have 7-10 players). I don't see how it could be played NL/PL, since there's too much luck and there isn't enough information to really make the kind of decisions that you would back your stack with.

I've never seen NL Omaha, and it wouldn't work since the current nut hand could just go all-in so that it wouldn't have to face scare cards on later streets, and if drawing hands didn't have implied odds and bluff possibilities you would lose most of the play in the game. Some online sites have NL Omaha-8, but I imagine that's a terrible game for similar reasons.

[ QUOTE ]
5Draw works well as a big bet game because there's only one draw, but I didn't include that.

[/ QUOTE ]

That's another game that I wouldn't think would work with NL or PL betting, since there just isn't enough information to really make clear decisions.

[turnipmonster]

you guys that are saying PLO are kidding, right?

[PokrLikeItsProse]

We've all been talking mostly in terms of a skilled player's edge over a bad player. What about a skilled player's edge over an average player or a great player's edge over a merely good player. Does it necessarily follow that the list is the same for all cases?

[blackize]

Well for skilled vs average, and great vs good Id say that
Stud is more skillful, since as I posted before there are so many different skills in use. Then Id say Omaha since an average player probably doesnt know anything about redraws and draws to non nut hands. The ggood players in Omaha are probably lacking in reading skills and would thus be at a large disadvantage, but not much more than at a holdem table.

[Iceman]

[ QUOTE ]
We've all been talking mostly in terms of a skilled player's edge over a bad player. What about a skilled player's edge over an average player or a great player's edge over a merely good player. Does it necessarily follow that the list is the same for all cases?

[/ QUOTE ]

No. For example, in NL holdem a skilled player has a huge edge over morons, but that edge is much smaller over even average players. The same is true in PLO-8. PLO high is a game where there's a big difference between an expert and a "merely good" player. In limit games, Omaha-8 and stud-8 are the most profitable against bad players, but there's very little difference between an expert and an average player in those games. Stud versus limit holdem is debatable. David points out that they used to have 100-200 half-holdem half-stud games, but they broke up when the holdem experts won all the stud experts' money. Hand reading is rewarded more in holdem than in stud, since in stud the hands tend to run closer in value on the later streets, so even if you know you're beaten you should often call anyway. By contrast, Mason suggests that the most skillful players of all are the high-limit stud experts, since stud has a lot more strategic complexity, a much wider variety of possible situations, and a lot more factors to account for when making decisions.