Keithington Variation I Dreamed Up That's Probably a Terrible Idea (1 Viewer)

[Moxie Mike]

I read about 'Keithington' but I've never played it. As I understand it, it's a double board flop game where players are dealt 5 cards and the top board plays 5-card Omaha and splits with the best Holdem hand on the bottom board.

I thought about a variation where after the last betting round is completed, instead of assigning the top board to Omaha and the bottom to Holdem, the Holdem hand shows down first, and which ever board makes the best hand is eliminated, leaving the other board to play for the 5-card Omaha half of the pot. You could also do it the other way around - I'm not sure one way would be better than the other.

Thoughts?

Tagging @detroitdad, @Jimulacrum, @upNdown & @BGinGA

 

[Jimulacrum]

I read about 'Keithington' but I've never played it. As I understand it, it's a double board flop game where players are dealt 5 cards and the top board plays 5-card Omaha and splits with the best Holdem hand on the bottom board.

I thought about a variation where after the last betting round is completed, the Holdem hand shows down first, and which ever board makes the best hand is eliminated, leaving the other board to play for the 5-card Omaha half of the pot. You could also do it the other way around - I'm not sure one way would be better than the other.

Thoughts?

Tagging @detroitdad, @Jimulacrum, @upNdown & @BGinGA

I don't understand what you mean by "which ever board makes the best hand is eliminated."

In this game, you show down your whole hand at once (it's not split like in SOHE), so I presume you mean you assess who wins the Hold'em side first. But not sure where you intend to go from there. Do you mean the player who wins the Hold'em half of the pot is excluded from the Omaha half?

 

[Moxie Mike]

I don't understand what you mean by "which ever board makes the best hand is eliminated."

In this game, you show down your whole hand at once (it's not split like in SOHE), so I presume you mean you assess who wins the Hold'em side first. But not sure where you intend to go from there. Do you mean the player who wins the Hold'em half of the pot is excluded from the Omaha half?

Sorry I wasn't clear.

What I meant was alternatively to assigning the top board to Omaha and the bottom board to Holdem, the Holdem hand shows down first and eliminates which one is used to make a winning hand.

That board would be turned over and then the cards would be read for Omaha.

 

[Jimulacrum]

Sorry I wasn't clear.

What I meant was alternatively to assigning the top board to Omaha and the bottom board to Holdem, the Holdem hand shows down first and eliminates which one is used to make a winning hand.

That board would be turned over and then the cards would be read for Omaha.

So you deal out both boards and play it out to the end, and everyone tables their hole cards.

After carefully assessing both boards against all the hands at showdown, you determine which hand makes the most powerful Hold'em hand with either board, and that board is removed from play. The other board survives and the pot is awarded exactly as it would be for 5-card Omaha.

Is that about right?

 

[Moxie Mike]

So you deal out both boards and play it out to the end, and everyone tables their hole cards.

After carefully assessing both boards against all the hands at showdown, you determine which hand makes the most powerful Hold'em hand with either board, and that board is removed from play. The other board survives and the pot is awarded exactly as it would be for 5-card Omaha.

Is that about right?

Yes that's it. You worded it much better that I lol.

 

[Moxie Mike]

So it might play better showing down the Omaha hand first... since 5 card super duper holdem is kind of nutty. Showing down the Holdem hand first makes the Omaha side kind of an afterthought.

 

[Jimulacrum]

Yes that's it. You worded it much better that I lol.

This sounds difficult to adjudicate. Very tricky to play too, since sometimes your best Hold'em hand will also be your best Omaha hand on the same board, which could mean the hand you expect to win will actually get killed. But as a wise man once said, that's why they call it gambling.

Would love to hear how this plays out if you give it a try.

 

[Machine]

Holdem hand first makes the Omaha side kind of an afterthought.

 

[Moxie Mike]

This sounds difficult to adjudicate. Very tricky to play too, since sometimes your best Hold'em hand will also be your best Omaha hand on the same board, which could mean the hand you expect to win will actually get killed. But as a wise man once said, that's why they call it gambling.

Would love to hear how this plays out if you give it a try.

After a couple dummy hands we played an orbit of it 6-handed FL. Very quickly in dummy hands it became apparent that showing down the Omaha hand first made more sense. So that's how we played it.

In some hands it was pretty obvious which board was going to be the Omaha hand and subsequently cancelled, which made hand reading easier. For example, we had a hand where one flop came out paired and the other was dry with heavy betting... on another hand by the river card neither board was paired and one had a 3-flush to it. 4-handed it was highly likely someone made a flush.

Other times it was more of a crapshoot.

I ran pretty well, scooping one big pot when I held 8-8-K-5-6 on runouts of 8-7-10-3-7 (Omaha) and K-10-4-3-K (Holdem). Reading that hand by the river took a little getting used to, but I put in a raise and got called by the underfull on both boards, thinking they were good one way or the other.

The group was pretty lukewarm about it overall... I personally though it was alright and I'd play it again... a couple others didn't care for it too much and the 3 others felt the same way about it as I did. So I might stick it in the rotation for a bit to see if anyone warms up to it.

As a point of reference, here is the rotation of the games we play:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/10Csl7Z0HiyzUR_SOpezME5J4cPhQ7JUlZ6VGJFYkagg/edit?usp=sharing

As to the name, it is unofficially now called 'Moxington'.

 

[TheOffalo]

This is interesting, like a reverse "Consolation" format, where the hand/cards you use for one showdown gets eliminated for use for the other showdown. "Consolation" is my name for this format, others may call it different things.

So if you were playing SOHE, it'd be one board, and then everyone's best hand (either HE or O) competes with everyone else's best hand for half the pot, then those hands are eliminated and then everyone's "consolation" hand competes against everyone else's consolation hand for the other half of the pot. Could play with any game where you split your hand like SHESHE.

You can also do this in a non-hand-splitting game but with two half pots, like hi/lo Omaha to mess with things more. For example, playing O8 with the consolation format, you could have everyone's high Omaha hand (best 2 out of 4 hole cards) compete first for half the pot and then are eliminated, potentially also eliminating the potential to make a low hand.

For additional fuckery, I came up with "Bipolar Omaha 8 Consolation" (or "BiPLOlar"), where if the flop comes out majority red cards the low hand gets evaluated first (and in that case there's no qualifier for the low) eliminating the best low cards from your hand before competing for the high half of the pot. (If the flop comes out majority black cards, then high is evaluated first, and there is a qualifier for the low half.)

Anyway, your version eliminates a board instead of cards. It sounds interesting. Almost like a derailment. You could even do 3 boards (if you have enough cards) and have one board get eliminated for best Omaha and still have 2 boards left for hold'em.

But to get clarification, it's 5-card super hold 'em in Moxington? It's not 0-2 cards out of the 5 hole cards for the hold 'em half?

 

[Jimulacrum]

After a couple dummy hands we played an orbit of it 6-handed FL. Very quickly in dummy hands it became apparent that showing down the Omaha hand first made more sense. So that's how we played it.

In some hands it was pretty obvious which board was going to be the Omaha hand and subsequently cancelled, which made hand reading easier. For example, we had a hand where one flop came out paired and the other was dry with heavy betting... on another hand by the river card neither board was paired and one had a 3-flush to it. 4-handed it was highly likely someone made a flush.

Other times it was more of a crapshoot.

I ran pretty well, scooping one big pot when I held 8-8-K-5-6 on runouts of 8-7-10-3-7 (Omaha) and K-10-4-3-K (Holdem). Reading that hand by the river took a little getting used to, but I put in a raise and got called by the underfull on both boards, thinking they were good one way or the other.

The group was pretty lukewarm about it overall... I personally though it was alright and I'd play it again... a couple others didn't care for it too much and the 3 others felt the same way about it as I did. So I might stick it in the rotation for a bit to see if anyone warms up to it.

As a point of reference, here is the rotation of the games we play:

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/10Csl7Z0HiyzUR_SOpezME5J4cPhQ7JUlZ6VGJFYkagg/edit?usp=sharing

Nice. Pretty adventurous group, I can see.

As to the name, it is unofficially now called 'Moxington'.

I sense a common but subtle thread.

 

[Moxie Mike]

But to get clarification, it's 5-card super hold 'em in Moxington?

Correct.

Nice. Pretty adventurous group, I can see.

Yeah they're open to trying things... anything to avoid the doldrums of NLHE. We're looking for multi-way pots that almost always go to showdown. Some games were too ridiculous for them, like Scarney for example, so they didn't make it into the rotation.

 

[Moxie Mike]

Moxington update:

So we're played it 3 sessions now. A regular who hosts circus games on his own introduced it to his group, who loved it. Moxington might be here to stay. And it might be spreading

Hand reading and strategy is tricky but it's getting a little easier with experience. For example, last night I held X X after the river cards were places on unpaired runouts of:

X X X and X X respectively.

On the river, I bet into 3 players from EP, hoping/expecting a player holding strong spades to raise, which they did. That folded out a weak FH (someone holding 2-2-2-X-X or something like that) on the surviving board and my heart flush held up on the Holdem side. They verbally revealed their hand... lamenting their fold but acknowledging they didn't want to call 2 (or more) bets cold for 1/2 the pot at best.

So it's going into the slideshow on a provisional basis. My regular crowd is still somewhat divided... but there's another circus game that people were hesitant about but has now become a staple of our rotation. It took a while, but what can I say - with enough time Scrotum definitely grows on you

 

[Labrat]

Good God.

In order to play this game I wouldn't be able to even look at a beer.