@Frogzilla posted about a SSHESHE (simultaneous super hold 'em / super hold 'em) hand last month (read that page and the first couple posts of the next page), where each player's best hand competed for half the pot, and each player's worst (second best) hand competed for the other half of the pot. @CraigT78 commented about it too. (Anyone know where this format originated? First I heard of it.)
I thought it was a very interesting variation/variant on a split pot game! If you're having trouble grasping it, I'll run through an example, using SHEHE (not super) and splitting the hand preflop to keep it simple:
.
Charlie would win the first half of the pot with his best hand [
][
], beating Alice's best hand [
] and Bob's best hand [
].
Alice would win the second half of the pot with her 2nd best hand[
]beating Charlie's 2nd best hand [
] and Bob's 2nd best hand [
].
(I really hope I didn't foul the example by duplicating a card or something...)
The example above is relatively straightforward, with somewhat easy decisions on the splits. But there's definitely some strategic thinking that could be deployed. Consider these two scenarios separately:
and Charlie would have chopped the second half of the pot with tied would have won the second half of the pot with Broadway. Scoop!
*Side Debate: Is an ace-high flush considered the "nut flush" when going up against a straight flush? Some say no, because a straight flush is a better flush. But I say an ace-high flush is always the "nut flush" because flush and straight flush are two separate hand rankings (with two other ranks in between them, full house and four-of-a-kind). So a straight flush is not just a better flush.
(This is turning out to be longer than I intended. I think I'm going to post the thread now, so people can start commenting, if they've been able to get through this messy post. The second part will be trying to come up with a name for the variant, since this could be applied to all kinds of games, kind of like "Crazy" can be applied to different games to determine the timing of discards...)
I thought it was a very interesting variation/variant on a split pot game! If you're having trouble grasping it, I'll run through an example, using SHEHE (not super) and splitting the hand preflop to keep it simple:
- Alice is dealt
which she splits into and .
- Bob is dealt
which he splits into and .
- Charlie is dealt
which he splits into and .
.Charlie would win the first half of the pot with his best hand [
][], beating Alice's best hand [] and Bob's best hand [].Alice would win the second half of the pot with her 2nd best hand
[]beating Charlie's 2nd best hand [] and Bob's 2nd best hand [].(I really hope I didn't foul the example by duplicating a card or something...)
The example above is relatively straightforward, with somewhat easy decisions on the splits. But there's definitely some strategic thinking that could be deployed. Consider these two scenarios separately:
- Charlie could have easily chosen to split his into and , since an inside straight-flush draw is highly unlikely to hit, and Big Slick is a great hand even off-suit, as is a pocket pair (either have potential to win a second-best showdown). If he did that, his Nines and Threes would have been the worst hand for the first half of the pot (Alice would have won w/trip Threes), but he would have won the second half of the pot with Broadway.
EDIT: I made a mistake in this scenario. Charlie's Broadway would have showed down first and won, then his Nines would have lost in the second showdown. I'm not going to rework the scenario, since this is just an example, but you can see that putting some thought into how you split is important.
- If Bob's cards had slightly different suits, say
, then he might have split his hand into and if he thought double-suited with an Ace in both hands had better chances to win the second half of the pot compared to King-Deuce off-suit. He would've still lost the first half of the pot with his nut flush* against Charlie's straight flush (in the original scenario), but he would have won the second half of the pot with Broadway over Alice's Queens and Tens.
*Side Debate: Is an ace-high flush considered the "nut flush" when going up against a straight flush? Some say no, because a straight flush is a better flush. But I say an ace-high flush is always the "nut flush" because flush and straight flush are two separate hand rankings (with two other ranks in between them, full house and four-of-a-kind). So a straight flush is not just a better flush.
(This is turning out to be longer than I intended. I think I'm going to post the thread now, so people can start commenting, if they've been able to get through this messy post. The second part will be trying to come up with a name for the variant, since this could be applied to all kinds of games, kind of like "Crazy" can be applied to different games to determine the timing of discards...)
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