Double flop hold-em

[Sykes]

At Dania Jai-Alai, they have poker tables, running the usual 15 hold-em tables,1 Omaha hi/lo table, and a special 1-2 table game of Double flop hold'em.

The game plays out the same as hold'em with 1 major differences. There are two flops and two turns.

Both flops are dealt at the same time and there is a top and bottom one to play from.

So say you have A2spades

Top flop is 6s 7s Tc
Bottom flop is Ac 8s 2c

So on the top flop, you have an Ace high flush draw and on the bottom flop you have Aces up.

Turn is dealt the same way.

There is only one river card.

High hand of top row will split with High hand of bottom row. There will be cases where hands will take the whole pot.



The question is:

How to play this game??

Obviously, this game was created for the action. But that doesn't mean skilled players can't win at this game, they just need proper hand selection.

My estimate is that most of the time pre-flop will be capped.

Knowing this, I would have to say that the most playable hands are Axs/PP (meaning you always have to play this). This is about 9.5% of the total hands.

Are there any hands that should be played for 4 bets pf?
3 bets?
2 bets?
limps?

[UATrewqaz]

This is just "my" thoughts and I have no way of backing it up...

I would think high PP go way up in value, because they are hands that can win unimpoved, thus giving you a great chance of winning at least half the pot.

High unpaired cards also go way up in value.

AK has a very good chance of catching something on one of the flops, if not both.

The utlimate goal as with all split pot games is to scoop the whole pot. The hands you scoop will be the hands you make your money on.

Thus you want to play hands that have good potential for scooping, whichever htose may be.

[Sykes]

You raise a good point, UA, when saying that the ultimate goal is scooping the whole pot. However, I think it would still be profitable to play hands that have close to 0% chance of scooping since there is at least 6 other people putting their money in pre-flop with rags.

So let's add, AJo-AKs (maybe ATo?), KJs-KQs, QTo-QJs, JTo/s
Even if we add these hands, do we call 4 bets preflop with KJ? JT? Obviously you do with AK.

Adding these high unpaired cards moves our VP$IP to 18.6% (Excluding ATo/KTs/KTo)

[Spook]

I have a hard time calling four bets with any hand that I can't call four bets with in a single flop game. Even if the game was extremely wild. HEFAP talks about adjusting to wild games. That might be a good resource for you.
Part of the danger of this game is trying to draw for half the pot when the other board is getting pumped. So post flop play with marginal hands is also going to give you more oppertunies to make mistakes.

[Sykes]

[ QUOTE ]
I have a hard time calling four bets with any hand that I can't call four bets with in a single flop game.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes, I know what you are saying but realize that Axs and pp in this game go up amazingly for the fact that you have two chances to hit a set/flush plus with Axs you can hit your flush on one board and hit trips/boat on the other board to scoop.

I think in this game Axs goes up dramatically.

[ QUOTE ]
Even if the game was extremely wild. HEFAP talks about adjusting to wild games. That might be a good resource for you.
Part of the danger of this game is trying to draw for half the pot when the other board is getting pumped. So post flop play with marginal hands is also going to give you more oppertunies to make mistakes.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes, but compare this game to Omaha8/b. Going 4 bets pre-flop with A23x is fine in a loose (6+ players to flop) game since you have so much dead money in the pot (I.e. people seeing flop with J942). Same thing in this game.

[callydrias]

I agree with UA about playing scoop hands only. Just because you have a chance to hit on both boards with Axs doesn't mean you should be paying 4 bets to see the flops. Consider the case when you only hit 1 flop with a "drawing hand", which will happen significantly more often than hitting both. It will be more difficult to put your opponents on a particular board (unlike a high/low split game) so you need to be confident that you will take the board you're playing for. If you're dominated on the board you're gunning for with no chance to pick up the other board, you're going to lose a lot of chips.

I think big pocket pairs are huge because they have so much scoop potential. Big suited broadway are also good for makeing top pair on both boards. Smaller pocket pairs might be okay for locking up one board with a set, but have a very reduced chance to scoop as half of your set outs are gone. I'm not sure what the overall EV would be for them - probably depends on the game. Suited connectors are probably trash as you're likely drawing on only a single board, but if you do happen to hit both boards, many of your outs will be out of play (because they're on the other board).

[Alex/Mugaaz]

Unless I'm missing something obvious there is almost no difference in hand values between regular holdem and this game. Small pairs would go down in value, big pairs would go up, and suitec connectors should go up since they have more "outs" to real hands so they can actually make 2 seperate hands, whereas hand like 66 will at best flop 1 set on one board and be almost completely dead on the other.
Postflop play will be based pretty much on knowing what your real equity is for each half. Basically this should be like no foldem holdem with less value on hand reading and protecting and way more on knowledge of quity.

[Alex/Mugaaz]

Also I don't think you can scoop in this game very often. Secondly if this game is raked I'm not sure if its possible to win versus anything but a lot of drunk players.

[Yads]

in such a wild game I would stick to playing high suited cards and high pocket pairs (AA-JJ). I would probably dump the weaker high suited cards like QJ and KJ as well.

Big offsuit cards are worthless. Sure there's a lot of dead money going in, but let's say you flop TPGK on one board and nothing on the other board. How far are you planning to go with this hand?

[chaos]

They spread a game similar to this at the Aviation Club in Paris. There are two differences, one slight and one major. The slight difference is that they put out two distinct river cards. This will have little effect on proper strategy. The major difference is that the game is played pot limit.

I often found that while I might have hit one flop (say top pair top kicker) and completely missed the other, I would not be able to stand the heat and have to fold. It was often difficult to tell which flop hit which player. Sometimes it was easier on the turn or the river since if a card completed a draw and a new player became aggressive it was likely that he made his draw.

I never did develop a good strategy for double-flop hold'em.