At the 2006 World Series of Poker, a $50,000 buy-in event asked the best players in the world to prove themselves at five games instead of one. Chip Reese won it, along with $1,716,000, and the format he mastered still defines what “all-round” means in poker. That event was HORSE, and in 2010 the WSOP turned it into the Poker Players Championship, an eight-game mix.
You do not need a $50,000 buy-in to run into mixed games. Card rooms spread HORSE and eight-game tables, online sites run Pot-Limit Omaha around the clock, and short deck became a fixture of high-stakes series in Asia. The skills from Texas Hold’em carry over, but several of them run backwards. Here is what changes, game by game.
Pot-Limit Omaha: four cards, two of them used
Omaha deals four hole cards and requires you to use exactly two, combined with exactly three from the board. That rule catches every Hold’em player at least once. A single ace of spades with four spades on the board is not a flush.
The bigger adjustment is how close hand values are. In Hold’em, pocket aces are a large favorite against any random hand. In Omaha, aces with two weak side cards are a much smaller favorite against a well-connected hand like 9-8-7-6 double suited. The best starting hands work together: all four cards connect, or pair up with suits, so that many flops give you something.
Three habits help a new PLO player most:
- Play hands that can make the nuts, and be wary of hands that make the second-best flush or the bottom end of a straight.
- Treat position as even more valuable than in Hold’em, since the pot-limit structure lets the last player to act control the size of the pot.
- Count your outs on draws carefully; a wrap straight draw can have more outs than a flush draw, and some outs may give an opponent a better hand.
The pot limit itself shapes strategy. Nobody can move all in for twenty times the pot on the flop, so stacks go in over several streets, and big pots tend to arrive on the turn and river. Hands that need help on later streets lose value quickly if you are not getting the right price.
Short deck: the same game with a different deck
Short deck, also called six-plus hold’em, plays like Texas Hold’em with the twos through fives removed. The 36-card deck changes the maths. The lowest straight is A-6-7-8-9, with the ace playing low. Flushes are harder to make than full houses, so most games rank the flush above the full house. Some rules also move three of a kind above the straight, so check the house rules before you sit down.
The format grew out of games in Asia and reached the big stage when Triton Poker put televised short deck events on its 2018 series, with Phil Ivey winning the first HK$250,000 event. The WSOP added a $10,000 Short Deck event in 2019, won by Alex Epstein, a PLO cash game player who had never cashed at the WSOP before.
Strategically, short deck rewards aggression and equity awareness. With fewer cards, hands run closer together and big draws are frequent. Pairs make sets more often, and connected cards hit straights more often. Hands that would be marginal in Hold’em become playable, while overplaying one pair is still a quick way to lose a stack.
HORSE: five games, one rotation
HORSE is an acronym: Hold’em, Omaha Hi-Lo, Razz, Seven Card Stud and Stud Eight or Better. It is usually played with fixed-limit betting, which changes how every game feels. You cannot push someone off a hand with a large bet, so the edge comes from hand selection and from saving or winning one extra bet at a time.
Limit Hold’em rewards tight, aggressive starting hands and a willingness to call down more often than in no-limit, because the pot is frequently too big to fold for one bet. For a refresher on which Texas Hold’em hands beat which, see the site’s poker hand rankings.
Omaha Hi-Lo splits the pot between the best high hand and the best qualifying low (five unpaired cards, eight or lower). The best hands can win both halves. A-2 with another low card and a suit is the classic strong start. Hands that can only win the high half, especially without the nuts, often end up quartered or simply losing.
Razz is Seven Card Stud played for low: the lowest five cards win, aces are low, and straights and flushes do not count against you. Three cards to a low with no pairs make a good start, and the upcards of your opponents tell you how live your draw is.
Seven Card Stud has no community cards. Each player gets two cards down and one up, followed by more upcards and a final card down. The main skill is memory. The cards already folded tell you which of your outs are dead, and paying attention to them is often worth more than any starting-hand chart.
Stud Eight or Better combines Stud with the split-pot rule from Omaha Hi-Lo. As in Omaha Hi-Lo, starting hands that can go both ways, such as three low cards with straight or flush potential, are worth the most.
Practising the rotation
The hardest part of mixed games is the switch itself. A player who is sharp at Hold’em can still lose a round of Razz by playing a hand that has already been beaten on board. If you are building toward a mixed game, practice each variant on its own first, then in rotation. Beginners who already know the basics of Texas Hold’em rules can treat Omaha as the next step, and variants such as Pineapple poker make a gentle bridge between two and four hole cards.
Mixed events now turn up even at smaller festivals. The 2025 WSOP Circuit stop in Tallinn, Estonia, awarded a ring for an 8-Game event, won by Krzysztof Budka of Poland.