The 8 Game Experiment

I sit here pondering to myself about the games that I play. Early on in this journey I wrote a post when I realised that no limit hold 'em wasn't the "be all and end all" of poker. I find that no limit hold em is the hardest game to profit from for me. I think that because so many people are clued up on the basic and intermediate skills required to play it, it gives me, or any reasonably intelligent poker player less of an edge.

People know the odds of hitting their flush draws. They know that raising 3 times the blinds pre flop from an early position means that I have a good hand. And they know not to hold on to their ace – rag after they miss the flop if someone is betting into them.

These basic skills that every poker player has seem to be missing in other games though.

I have noticed that in low ball games like razz, deuce to seven triple draw etc, people make silly mistakes that pay me off. They make errors that you don’t really see in hold ‘em. In Omaha high / low, people will fight each other in a multi-way pot for the high end, allowing me to easily collect the low end half of the pot. I feel that I want to explore other games properly, instead of just playing a stud tournament here and there, or a razz cash game every now and then.

I have decided that it is time for an experiment.

In the 2008 World Series a new tournament was launched. It was structured the same as any other poker tournament, but every time the blinds went up, the game changed. It was like an extended HORSE game, but there was eight games played in rotation, so the tournament was imaginatively called “8 game”!

Pokerstars run “8 game” sit n go’s and tournaments which I have played. I satellited into the WCCOP 8 game tournament last year and although I think I did well, I didn’t cash. They also do cash games using the same format which will provide the perfect arena for this experiment.

I will play the small stake 8 game tables for 100 rounds. Each round consists of 6 hands of each game. This will be a total of 600 hands for each game. I have designed a simple spreadsheet to track my performance in each game. The object of this experiment is to find out which game I am best at, and which gives me the most money.

I will update soon with some results after I have played for a while.