A HORSE Comment Response

After my last post about my most recent ass kicking playing HORSE my sister posted the following comment:

Not to ask you to toot your own horn, but do you think your strength at HORSE is due to the fact that not many people are good at all the different types of games and able to switch back and forth between them? If so, could you make a name for yourself as Dave Huff, HORSE Champion? (That sounds like a taunt when I say it that way, and considering the source.....But it's actually a serious question.)

I certainly think it's a big advantage that I'm good at all of the games. Back in the days when I was a prop player at the Oaks Club I had to play Omaha and 7 card stud on a daily basis and got pretty good at both. Razz seems to come very natually to me and while stud Hi-Lo is my worst of the 5 games I have read a book about it which I'm sure is more than many of my opponents can say.

It's been obvious to me in these past few tournaments that when we switch games some of the players go from formidale opponents to having no clue. Most players seem to be comfortable with either the flop games (the H and the O) or the stud based games (the R, S, and E). It's actually tough to gain expereince in the stud based games these days since there are very few cash games for any kind of significant money and almost no tournaments.

I think this is mostly because in the stud based games you have to remember a bunch of cards that have come and gone and it's hard to do that playing many games at a time. As a result anyone who wants to play more than 2 or 3 games at once is naturally going to gravitate to flop games.

Another thing that I think has led to some of my success is HORSE tournaments are limit. This means that no one hand is going to do you in early on and it's more a sum of many small decisions rather than a few big ones that create my advantage.

Yet another thing that allowed me to win outright is my vast final table experience. I've played at hundreds of final tables. One more where 1st place is $2,000 isn't anything to take me off my game or make me nervous. On the other hand moving up a spot or two might be a big deal to my opponents (as it is for me when first place is $50,000 or $500,000).

As far as making a name for myself goes there are two problems. First and foremost there really aren't that many HORSE tournaments out there. To give you an idea, at this years WCOOP there are 17 hold'em events and 2 HORSE events (and one of those has a $10,000 buy in!!!) As another example, in the next hour on Pokerstars there are 18 tournaments starting: 15 are hold'em, two are Omaha and one is 7 card stud. By contrast there are only 4 HORSE tournaments in the next 13 hours and the biggest one has a $20 buy in.

The second problem is when you start playing for big bucks everyone knows how to play all the games at the highest level. While I feel like I can play Hold'em against the best players in the world and at least hold my own, I suspect I'd get my ass handed to me against top notch players in Omaha for example.

Behind the WSOP main event and maybe the $25,000 WPT championship the next most important tournament in the world is the $50,000 HORSE tournament at the WSOP (an event that's only 3 years old). Also the biggest cash game in the world which is a $4,000/$8,000 game at the Bellagio is basically HORSE with one or two other games mixed in.

You'll notice that the main point here is when you can find HORSE it's usually for very little money or insane amounts of money. On pokerstars there's typically a $5/$10game going and a $200/$400 game going. I could beat the shit our of the $5/$10 game and win enough for a nice dinner or lose enough money to buy a nice car in the $200/$400 game.

Since my last post I've played the $109 HORSE tournament on pokerstars twice: once finishing 6th out of 62 which paid close to $500 and then finishing dead last in a field of 64! Ha! That's poker!

I'm going to keep my eye out for HORSE opportunities and I'm certainly stoaked about the $215 HORSE event in the WCOOP. I think I have about 8 WCOOP cashes and my deepest finish came in the $215 HORSE in 2006 if I remember correctly.

Thanks for the comment!!!