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The Insider's Guide to Double Flop Games
Background
As part of a team of poker room managers at PokerStars, I occasionally come across enterprising businesspeople who want to sell their idea for a fantastic new poker variant to us. Usually that new poker variant involves taking an existing game like Hold’em and adding extra cards, changing the hand rankings, removing or reducing the element of chance, and so on.
It should be clear that new poker variants, no matter how inventive, are never novel enough to be copyrightable or sellable. However, it should also be clear that poker is a game that can be expanded almost infinitely, by tweaking the rules to produce new varieties. Home games all around the world invent new poker variants on a daily basis, and some of the best fun to be had in poker is in playing a game with friends which you all invented together.
That’s almost certainly how Double Flop games got started – somebody in a home game got adventurous and said ‘Hey, what if there were two flops instead of one’? Since then, double flop varieties of poker have had some success, and can be found in many Dealer’s Choice games in British casinos, and at a couple of smaller online poker rooms. In this article I’ll explain how to play, then explain some of the strategic adjustments you’ll have to make from the single-flop version in order to be successful.
How To Play
Almost any game that uses a ‘flop’ can be turned into a double flop game. Instead of dealing just one flop, you deal two simultaneously, followed by two turns and two rivers – it’s that simple. At the showdown, the pot is split between the best hand on the top board and the best hand on the bottom.
We’ll be discussing Hold’em and Omaha, because the strategic adjustments required are similar for both games.
Starting Hands
As with all split-pot games, the number one goal in Double Flop variants is to win the entire pot by making the best hand on both boards (known as scooping). This has a significant effect on the types of starting hands that are profitable in these games.
For example, unpaired offsuit cards lose a lot of value. These types of hands are most useful for building pair and two-pair type hands, and it’s hard enough to make a pair on one board, let alone two. In Hold’em, for example, A-K offsuit loses a lot of value because most of the time you will simply end up with ace-high on both boards. Since double flop games tend to be quite loose, you’re better off trying to build big hands like straights and flushes which have a better chance of holding up against a big field.
Similarly, small pairs drop in value because even if you make a set or full house on one board (which is hardly a guarantee), you will typically have nothing whatsoever on the other board.
In Omaha, small rundown hands also lose a lot of value, particularly if offsuit. In Double Flop Omaha you’re looking for hands that can make the nuts on both boards, and it’s just too rare for both flops to hit you perfectly.
If some hands go down in value, then others must go up. In Double Flop games, medium and high suited connected cards are perfect because they can build monster combination hands, like a straight on one board and a flush on the other, or two pair on top with a flush draw on the bottom. Big pairs can also be valuable given the right boards, but should obviously be played with caution if they don’t connect.
The Flops
When the flops arrive, the first thing you need to do is evaluate the strength of your hand on both boards combined. Since you’re aiming to win the whole pot, it’s much better to have a fairly good hand on two boards than it is to have a lock on one board and nothing at all on the other. In fact, if you have absolutely nothing on one board, and anything remotely weak on the other, you should be prepared to relinquish your hand to heavy action.
Note that in Double Flop games, there is a lot of extra information available. When we looked at Stud games in past issues, I emphasised the importance of using the upcards to help your decision-making. The same applies here – when evaluating one board, you should use the exposed cards on the other board to eliminate possibilities from your opponent’s range of hands. For example, you may know that your full house on the top board is the nuts if you hold J-J and the boards are J-9-9 and 9-5-4, because quad nines is no longer possible. Similarly, you may be able to adjust the chances of making a flush or straight based upon dead cards on the other board. When facing an aggressive opponent, take a moment to see if the hand he is representing is actually feasible or not!
Two situations crop up commonly in double flop games, which are diametrically opposed. In the first, you are freerolling – that is, you have the unbeatable nuts on one board, and a draw to the best hand on the other board. I the second situation, you’re attempting to pot build, because you’re guaranteed to win half of a multiway pot in which you have no hope to win on one board.
An example of a situation in which you are freerolling would be when you hold Q-Q-J-10 in Omaha and the flops come Q-Q-7 and 9-8-2. You have the stone cold nuts with four queens on top, and a multi-way draw on the bottom (a 7, J or 10 will make you the nut straight). In this situation, you’re almost guaranteed to win one half of the pot, and have a good shot at the other half also. It may be tempting to slowplay, but in fact you shouldn’t be scared to bet a hand like this aggressively. Because of the large number of possibilities, you’ll frequently get action from loose opponents anyway, and even if you don’t, the worst that will happen is that you’ll win the entire pot!
When pot building, you don’t play quite so aggressively. The idea is not to eliminate opponents unless you can eliminate them all – there’s no point in making the pot heads up if you are guaranteed to split the pot. Since you have no hope to win one half, you want to maximise the size of the half that you will win by convincing as many opponents as possible to put money into the pot. This means that you might consider just calling a bet in the hope that other opponents will overcall, or giving your opponents a chance to catch up by checking a strong hand.
For example, if you have the same Q-Q-J-10 in a big multiway pot, and the flops are Q-Q-7 and A-A-K, you have a guaranteed winner on the top board and no hope in hell of winning on the bottom. Therefore, your best chance to make money from the hand is to tag along while opponents holding A-x, K-K, or various flush and straight draws do battle against each other. You’ll win half of whatever they put into the pot, so your job is to build the pot in small, tempting increments that are easy for your opponents to call.
Box Out: Dealing Tips
In Double Flop games, you’re dealing many more cards. If you’re playing 4-Card Omaha, you can do so with a maximum of 9 players. For five and six-card Omaha, you can play with at most 7 and 6 players respectively.
Keep the number of wasted cards down by burning only once each round – that is, burn, then deal the first flop, then deal the second flop without burning.
The most efficient way to split the pot is to divide the highest denomination chips first, then the next highest, and so on until the pot is in two halves. If there is an odd chip left over of the smallest denomination in play, it should go to the player in the best position (i.e. closest to the button).
In heads up pots with a lot of action, it often makes sense to leave the bets in front of each player instead of pulling them into the pot. This makes the pot easier to split at the showdown, if necessary.
Box Out: Variants
There are two key ways to modify a double-flop game:
- Change the Winner: Double flop games are often played with the entire pot being awarded to the best overall hand – that is, the best hand on either board. Another variation would be to play the game hi/lo split and divide the pot into two halves per board, or four quarters in total.
- Change the Layout: It’s fairly common to arrange the community cards in a different way – for example, by having three flops, two turns, and one river, or by arranging them in different shape (such as in iron cross where the five community cards form a cross shape). Of course the most obvious way to change the layout would be to add yet another flop or two!