Razz Guide

DangerMouse · Posted: Fri Oct 03, 2008 12:34 pm Post subject: Razz Guide

The first thing I want to make clear is I didn`t write this

These are the thoughts of an online player by the name of LDJ. Imo this is an excellent guide to certain elements of the game of Razz. To give some idea why I trust the opinion of the writer, he was ranked 27th in Razz ($10 and under) by Bluff magazine and also ranked 5th at HORSE (same limits) in 2007.

The articles are reproduced with his permission and should he at a later date ask them to be removed I will do so immediately.

With that out of the way here`s LDJ`s Guide To Razz.

Razz is 7 card stud played for low. Aces are low. Straights and flushes dont count. Pairs are generally a bad thing (We will get into the exceptions about pairs when we get to some more advanced discussions). You are dealt 2 cards face-down and one face up followed by a betting round. 3 more face up cards are dealt with a betting round following each card, and finally the 7th card is placed faced down followed by a betting round. Generally the structure is that there is an ante, followed by the first 3 cards being dealt. The highest upcard has to bring in for either a half or a full small bet (bettors option), all bets after that are considered small bets, at least until after 5th street is dealt because then the bets double.

Feel free to post questions. I will try and answer them but it may not always be in a timely fashion, lol. I do play razz a fair amount, and I am quite successful at it, but just like any other advice you should take it with a grain of salt and temper it with what you are experiencing at the tables during your own games.

Odds are that I play at a higher limit than you will be, so most of my advice will be tailored to a game where people respect their money somewhat and they sometimes even like to try and keep it by playing well. If you are playing at 10c/20c or less, at some sites .25/.50 or less, you are going to be finding a loose game. In razz, I dont think you should loosen your game up too much to adjust to the chasers. What you should do is realise that they are going to be betting weaker hands than you (which is a good thing) and that the proper way to take advantage of this is to wait until you spot an advantage and then try to exploit it.

Dont loosen up your own game and start getting into raise wars with these people after 3rd street, because they are going to suck out on you. When you start playing with weak cards in the hole you are putting yourself at a great disadvantage and when you are facing 3 or 4 donks that are willing to call you to the river every time those weak cards are a killer as someone will ALWAYS suck out and if you play the donk game with the chasers you will only suck out one hand in 4, whilst the other 3 donks are going to suck out on you the other 75% of the time.

Since you know these donks are going to bet for you every hand in these cheap cash games, go ahead and let them bet. If you have a weak hand, fold it. If you have a good hand call them down and take a look at 4th street. If you catch bad there consider folding (I will get into starting hands in a future post). If you happen to catch good you can start planning your strategy based on the way your opponentshave been playing. Are you going to bet right out, or try and check raise.. or are you going to wait til 5th street and get your check-raise in when the bets double in size? (We will get into that later too)

As a beginning razz player you need to understand that limit razz is a game of chess, it is not a wham-bam-thank-you-maam like no limit holdem is. Dont expect to make a big bet and have everyone fold to you. To bluff in razz you need patience, you need to wait for the right situation and exploit it (everyone folds to you and only players left to act all have high cards showing, good spot to steal the antes) or you need to set the situation up, but that only works with players that you have good control over. (Control, you wonder? Control comes when you observe a players betting patterns and get to have a good understanding of what they will do on almost every hand. Practise guessing if the person to your left will raise, call or fold every time a play comes to them... once you start guessing right a large percentage of the time start using this to bet the player out of a pot even when they probably have the best hand)

I guess I will close out this post with my usual reminder to make sure you read your hand the right way. Too many people make the mistake of reading their hand A2345 when it is actually read 5432A. This gets rid of the common mistake of misreading their hands. Put this way

A4567
A2348 It is easy to mistake hand 2 as the winner, but put this way:

7654A
8432A

It is immediately obvious who won the hand.
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DangerMouse · Posted: Fri Oct 03, 2008 12:34 pm Post subject:

I know I promised to talk about a board lock next, but I just re-read my previous post and thought maybe I should clarify something.

I recommended that you play passively against aggressive players who will bet out on every hand and I know that is a tough pill for a lot of you to swallow because in holdem, especially nl holdem, you like to come over the top with a re-raise to put the fear of God into your opponent... who knows you may even win the pot right there, right?

Well, in razz, especially against poor players (who tend to come from holdem), coming over the top with a weak hand is just going to get you into trouble. Besides, you know that a bet is going to be made by someone, so why should it be you? Look at it this way, razz is a game of patience where you actually do play the cards. It's not a game of betting like NL Holdem, it is a card game. Yes you do need to mix your play up a bit, and yes you do need to adjust your play to your opponents and yes you do need to try and play the other players somewhat -- but in this game the cards are of the utmost importance so why make bets when you dont have the cards yet. The other players are going to be putting their money in the pot every single hand, so why should you? You are going to be the smart one who folds losing hands and plays winning hands.

I was watching the live netcast of the UB Online poker Championships (UBOC) and Annie Duke was providing the colour commentary of the Horse tourney and during the razz section she said something that hopefully will bring the importance of not betting bad cards home: She said that Razz is pretty much the only poker game where you can get a full 2 cards ahead of your opponent. So if you start with a face card in the hole, you are at least two cards behind an opponent who started with three small cards in the hole.

Lets say you start with a smooth K in the hole, and your opponents start with mediocre hands:

K2A
45T
569
678
45J
789

Lets forget the obvious ante steal attempt that you could try in a more advanced game and focus on the limits you are going to be playing at: You just know you are going to get a caller or 3... and with your hand how are you going to catch these players?

Lets say you catch perfect and he catches bad:

K2A3
45TJ

You opponent is still beating you! Now lets say this happens again:

K2A34
45TJQ

Look, your opponent has caught two HORRIBLE cards in a row and you have caught perfect and you are STILL BEHIND! I used an extreme example there, and by all rights you should win this hand now as nobody but a complete idiot would play that hand... so lets quickly look at a less extreme example:

K2A45
45T67

Here you have caught almost perfect and yet you are still behind! In fact now you still need to catch a 3,6 or 7 and hope your opponent misses the next 2 cards. If he catches under a 4 on the next card you are still behind even if you catch perfect, and then you would be forced to catch good on 7th street because if you dont catch a good card he can catch a brick and still win the hand... all of the pressure is on you to catch good on 7th simply because you made a small mistake on 3rd street.

A lot of people make two basic mistakes in Razz:

Mistake #1: "You dont play the cards in the hole, you play the cards that are showing" Wrong! If you are in a loose game which essentially all low-limit on-line games are, you need to play your hole cards because there will be a showdown almost every freaking hand. People dont know how to fold and if you play with the theory that 3 of your 7 cards dont matter you are going to be coming up against 5 card hands and you are going to be handing your hard-earned money over to a jackass.

Mistake #2: "Razz is a chasers game" Wrong! As I just showed you, it is VERY tough to come back from a bad starting hand. Yeah it can be done, but remember if there are 3 donks in the pot with you at the showdown -- and you start playing like a donk too-- you will be sucked out on 3 hands out of 4 and you will have no one to blame but yourself. People who say Razz is a chasers game are invariably people who were involved in the chase themselves and are bitter at being beaten at their own game. You actually want people like that across the table from you, just make sure you are playing solid cards and you will take down a lot of big pots against these people. Just dont get married to your hand and remember where the fold button is if you catch bad. And, if your opponent donks out, try to grin and bare it cuz you will take all that back (and more) from him if you dont chase him away from the table by yelling.

So, hopefully in this post we have learned to play quality cards because we cant chase players out with a bet, and we also learned not to feed the donkeys.

Upcoming over the next few posts :

How to tell you have won the hand when there are still 2 cards to come (board lock)

Starting hand requirements

Board Lock:
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DangerMouse · Posted: Fri Oct 03, 2008 12:35 pm Post subject:

A board lock is something that I think is unique to stud games. If you understand the concept of the board lock, you can actually know whether or not you have won a hand as early as 5th street when there are still 3 betting rounds and 2 more cards to come. Unfortunately, you won’t be able to discern this invaluable piece of knowledge on every hand, but when you do have a lock it can be very profitable.

First lets look at the structure of Razz. Cards are dealt like this (x=down cards not seen by your opponents)

xxA234x

I guess I should veer off the main topic for a moment and touch upon a concept I haven’t really discussed yet. If all you see when you play any form of stud are hands that look like the above, then you are in some serious freaking trouble. You can get away with only playing your own hand in holdem and still have some limited success, but in stud games if all you see are your own cards you are a guaranteed loser. They say that in NL holdem you don’t play the cards you play your opponent. In stud, it could be said that you don’t play your opponent, you play your opponents cards and you better have a damn good idea of what they may have otherwise you are done like dinner.

This is what you should see when playing all forms of stud (underlined cards are your down cards):

You: 46AT2A5
Plyr 2:xxA534x
Plyr 3:xx825Kx
Plyr 4:xxQ – folded
Plyr 5:xx232T – folded
Plyr 6:xxJ – folded
Plyr 7:xxK – folded

If you look at the hands above, a lot of players would be worried about what player 2 might have. In fact they would be worried that he may have the nuts: 5432A, but if you were really observing the table you would know that he cant have the bike because all the 2s were either folded or are sitting in other peoples hands. This means that player 2 can have no better a hand than 6543A, and since you have 6542A you have a board lock. Admittedly this is a little different than the normal board lock because it is not often you will know where all 4 of a certain card are, but the real point I am making is that if you know three aces are out, you can definitely discount the chances your opponent has an ace in the hole. The same goes with all the other small cards. Not only does being aware help you know what your opponents may not have, it will also let you know what cards you are not likely to catch and that should have a huge effect on what hands you play. I will discuss this topic a little later when we look at starting hands as well as when we compare drawing smooth vs. drawing rough.

Okay, now that we are done with that mild digression we should start looking at the real topic at hand: Discerning when you have a board lock:

A board lock is when you have the best hand… no chance to lose… and this is before the final card is even dealt, and even better: you know you are invincible. First thing you have to remember is that although you get dealt 7 cards in razz you are only going to use 5 to make your best hand. This means you throw away your two worst cards. You should get into the habit of mentally throwing away your opponents 2 worst cards and having a look at what is left, this will tell you what their best possible hand is. For example:

Plyr 1: xx98TK
me: 4567K9

Who is going to win this hand? Me or player 1? If you guessed me, move to the front of the class. If you remove the two worst cards from player 1 he would be left with:

Player 1: 98xx
Me: 97654

I am definitely in the lead right now, but even better, I have a board lock. I can’t lose, it is impossible… you just have to hope that your opponent doesn’t realise that he is already beaten and that you can get some extra bets out there.

You may be thinking that I don’t have him beaten yet, because there are cards still to come and what if he catches good and I catch bad? Well, what I like to do in this situation is assume that the player’s hidden cards (and cards that haven’t been dealt yet) are perfect. So when we do that Player1 looks like this:

A298TK3

And then I like to pretend the cards I will be dealt are the worst possible (pairing your highest card is usually the worst possible brick to catch) , so I would look like this:

4567K9K

Now lets look at who wins if he catches perfect and I catch high pairs:

Player 1: 9832A
Me: 97654

See? I win!!

And I knew it before the last card was dealt, when there were still 2 rounds of betting for me to get extra bets in on. You can’t do that in holdem very bloody often, can you? But in razz you will run across this type of situation constantly. Let me tell you… when you have a board lock you aren’t gambling, that’s for sure. You don’t have to fear someone catching perfect, in fact you hope they do catch perfect! All you need to worry about at that point is getting as much money on the table as possible. In holdem I have lost with with straight flushes and four of a kind so many times you probably wouldn’t believe me if I told you. I thought I had a lock on the money those times too and got my whole stack out there only to lose to runner runner. I had quad aces go down to a royal flush one day… I thought I had a lock, but I didn’t. But in razz you don’t just think you have a lock, you KNOW you have a lock. You KNOW that you cant lose. Just get your money out there and hope you get some callers.

Now, that was a situation where you gained the board lock on 6th street, but there are certain situations where you can gain a board lock on 5th street. For example:

Plyr 1: xx879
Me: A2346

Throw away his worst 2 cards and the best he can do is a 7 for low (but he may do way worse than that), but I already have a 6 for low. I have a board lock here, but it is not a pretty one cuz the other player has to know he is beaten. In thi case I would check and hope he catches good and I catch bad. Lets say after 6th street the boards look like this:

Plyr 1: xx879A
Me: A2346K Now I may be able to get a bet out of him.

Lets look at one more example of a 5 card board lock:

Plyr 1: xx876
Me: A2346

Here we are more likely to get some bets out of him… because we don’t have a real strong lock here. In fact if our opponent has the perfect cards under, and catches perfect he could actually chop the pot. This is a good thing though because it gives him hope, and when our opponent has a hope to win the hand it actually gives us a good shot at extracting some extra money.

Oh, one more thing before I forget: When I said to subtract the 2 worst cards… only subtract them if they are above a 5. Only subtract cards 5 and below if they are paired. The reason for this is that cards 5 and below are ‘perfect’ and can’t be improved on.

Eg:

xx3452 (don’t subtract the 54 as those 2 cards can not be improved on, what you should do is look at this hand and realize you are probably beat. This player is drawing to a bike, or he may already have one!)

xxATAK (subtract the AK, cuz the K is the highest card and the second A is a pair which is bad… so this player is drawing to TA)

xxKA23 (Subtract the K only as the A23 can not be improved on)
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“We all pay for life with death, so everything in between should be free.”

DangerMouse · Posted: Fri Oct 03, 2008 12:36 pm Post subject:

Okay, so now we will do one more thing. I will post some hypothetical razz situations and you can guess who the winner will be. Pay attention though because sometimes there may not be a board lock. I will post the answers in the next post, so don’t scroll down without trying out the quiz first.

1) You: A2346Q
Plyr 1: xxA24K

2) You: 642T73
Plyr 1: xxA848

3) You: 753T2Q
Plyr 1: xxA24K

4) You: KA3429
Plyr 1: xxA2KK

5) You: 4A3T27
Plyr 1: xxAAK9
Plyr 2: xxA7KT
Plyr 3: xx2374
Plyr 4: xx55 - Folded
Plyr 5: xx5K – Folded
Plyr 6: xx5Q – Folded

The solutions are down a little further in this post, but first: Here is what is upcoming in future posts:

Starting hand requirements

Hopefully a Q & A session

then, if there is enough interest,

drawing smooth vs drawing rough

Solutions:

1) You: A2346Q
Plyr 1: xxA24K

Trick Q, no lock exists. You are drawing to a bike and potentially so is your opponent. You appear to have a nice advantage here and I would be betting this one like there is no tomorrow, but you don’t have a lock and potentially could lose the hand.

2) You: 642T73
Plyr 1: xxA848

This is a trickier sort of situation. Your best 5 card hand is a 76. Your opponent must lose an 8 as it is paired, but in this situation you also take away his second 8 and you are left with a 4 as his next highest card. When I wrote this problem I almost said his best hand is an 8 low, but it is not. That second 8 can confuse you, so be sure of what you are doing when removing pairs. In this case your opponent is potentially drawing to a bike (5432A) but you do appear to have a huge advantage over him because it is likely he will end up with an 8 low. I would be aggressive here but if he re-raises me in a tourney I would call him and then check call on the river. In a cash game I would call his raise and then either bet to his check or raise his bet on 7th street and take the beat if there is one to be handed out. Why the difference in betting? Well, cuz in a cash game if I am wrong I can put some more money on the table and win back what I lost. In a tourney once I lose my chips I am done, and besides I can usually get my money out against weak players in tourneys so I am willing to not get as much out of this advantage in the hopes of pressing home a bigger advantage later.

3) You: 753T2Q
Plyr 1: xxA24K

You don’t have a board lock but in this situation your opponent may have one on you. Play this hand cautiously.

4) You: KA3426
Plyr 1: xxA7KK

You probably made a mistake playing that king in the hole against an ace, but it has paid off in the long run and you now have a board lock against an opponent who is hopefully drawing to something like 23 or 24 in the hole and is still hoping that he can draw out on you. If your opponent does have 2 low cards in the hole you are in a sweet position to extract chips from him.

5) You: 4A3T27
Plyr 1: xxAAK9
Plyr 2: xxA7KT
Plyr 3: xx2374
Plyr 4: xx55 - Folded
Plyr 5: xx5K – Folded
Plyr 6: xx5Q - Folded
Here is an unusual situation which would escape most players if they weren’t paying attention. (Remember, in razz you are either paying attention or you are paying money) I will run this hand down player by player:

You: 4A3T27:
Your 5 card hand 7432A. You conceivably could improve if you catch a 5 or a 6.

Plyr 1: xxAAK9
Best 5 card hand is 9xxxA, which is worse than your hand. You have a board lock on this fellow. Good spot to try and take his chips, depending on the rest of the hands.

Plyr 2: xxA7KT
Best 5 card hand is 7xxxA. Imagine him catching the perfect cards and his best possible hand is 7432A, which is actually the same as your hand right now. So the worst you can do against this player is a chop, but you have a huge advantage over them because in order to chop they would need EXACTLY 234 in the hole. This is a good spot to take this guys chips, depending on the status of the last hand.

Plyr 3: xx2374:
Ut oh. You have trouble here. This guy has 3 cards 5 and below showing so you subtract the 7 and you are left with 432. This dude is drawing to beat you and the fact that you have a board lock against the other players is going to go to waste. He may be drawing to the bike, or maybe he is drawing to a 6. in either case he may beat you. Even worse, he could have a 5 card six or the bike right now in which case you may as well fold and muck. Right? Do you see any possibilities I missed? No? Well, then prepare to play this hand out as cheaply as possible because there is a decent chance you are beaten right now, or the bugger may just river you.

Or, you could remember that all the aces are out of the deck, so this dude CANT be drawing to the bike. Holy crap! I know where all the 5s are too, so lets take a look at what he would have if he had nothing but perfect cards in the hole and then hits the perfect river… and remember he cant have an ace or a 5 unless he is cheating:

6823749

Subtract the 98 and he has 76432 which is a worse hand than yours. You are sitting really pretty on this one because some of these people have decent hands and decent draws and you know for a fact that it is impossible for you to lose!Does it get any sweeter than that? Yes, they could call your bets, there’s even a chance someone could reraise. Heck the betting may get capped and you could take 2 or 3 of these people all the way to the river and there is now way you can lose! SWEET!

So here you are in a 4 way hand and the worst thing that can happen is the pot may get chopped 2 ways, but most likely you are going to be taking down a monster!
_________________

“It's always funny until someone gets hurt. Then it's just hilarious.”

“We all pay for life with death, so everything in between should be free.”

DangerMouse · Posted: Fri Oct 03, 2008 12:37 pm Post subject:

I am still working on the starting hand post. It's a toughie as starting hands in most stud games are kind of nebulous. Depending on your opponents' upcards a hand may be a fold one time, a call the next and a raise or a re-raise the next time around. I am trying to put something together that won't lead people astray and will give you a solid base to start your razz career with.

However, in the meantime, I am re-reading Sklansky's 7 Card Stud for Advanced Players (21st century edition) and I came across this advice for loose games that validates my strategy and probably explains it better than I did:

Excerpt from Sklansky's 7 Card Stud for Advanced Players (21st century edition)

An important concept (borrowed from razz)

There is an important concept involving loose games and bad players that is best illustrated by a situation in the game of razz. For those of you who don't know, razz is a seven card stud game played for low. The game is explained in detail in the book Sklansky on Poker.

One concept that Sklansky addresses, which we will expand on here, is that if you hold a slightly better starting hand than your opponent you shouldn't reraise their opening raise if that opponent is a bad player.

Here's why. Suppose you start with a 3 card 6 and your opponent raises with a seven up indicating a probable 3 card 7. The problem with reraising him is that when there is a double bet on 3rd street it becomes proper to take a second card on 4th street regardless of what happens. If there wasn't a double bet on third street, it would be proper to fold on fourth street if you catch a big one and he catches a baby. But your opponent wont make this fold if it comes the other way. So you should just call to keep 4th street from becoming a "shootout" where you and he will now play the same.

The general idea is that you extract the most money from your opponents by putting them into position to make big mistakes. Sometimes that means manipulating the pot size into one that is most likely to be a size where they make errors.

Now since Sklansky borrowed from a text on loose razz games to explain stud, I am going to borrow from his text on loose stud games to explain razz:

Excerpt from Sklansky's 7 Card Stud for Advanced Players (21st century edition)

So, how do you apply the previous concepts to a very good seven card stud game [or in this case to a very good razz game - LDJ] That is, in a loose passive game where many people play on 3rd street and then play poorly after that you should:

1. Play more hands than you would if the players were better, especially if you can get in for just the bring-in. This is because weaker hands are still often better than theirs and also because even if they aren't you can often outplay them later on.

2. Often try to keep the betting down to the size of the bring-in or just one full bet on 3rd street. This is because you gain a lot when bad players make incorrect calls on 4th street and beyond, as long as the pot is small.

Let's discuss this second point in a little more detail. Even if you have a good hand, you should be a little less apt to raise than if you were against better players. This is not only because the hand doesn't do well against many people, but for a second reason: With a hand that is pretty good but ot great, if you don't raise (and thereby cost yourself a little bit of money at that point) you gain it back plus some because had you made the pot bigger there would be less opportunities for your opponents to make significant mistakes later on.

Here is a general example: Suppose you know that a raise with a particular starting hand gains you $3 in expectation. It could still be wrong to raise. The problem is that by putting extra money in early you may make your opponents play on 4th street and beyond become "accidentally" correct or close to it. This might cost you more than the small amount you gain on 3rd street. Thus while you should play more hands than almost all pros do, a lot of those hands that seem like automatic raises should not be raised. You want your skill to mean more on further rounds.......

There is also another reason why you want to play a few more hand s in these loose, good games: It is the fact that since you're playing a lot of hands, even if these hands don't show much long term profit, your opponents will see this. Thus when you do have a top quality hand they wont throw their hands away as much because they are frequently seeing you in the pot.

Again, please remember that the above advice is tailored for loose, probably lower limit games, and you should always temper the advice you are given with what you are experiencing in the games you play in.
_________________

“It's always funny until someone gets hurt. Then it's just hilarious.”

“We all pay for life with death, so everything in between should be free.”

DangerMouse · Posted: Fri Oct 03, 2008 12:37 pm Post subject:

Starting Hands

I don’t know if any one has ever done a true starting hand list for Razz and I am not even going to try. This game isn’t as simple as reading the 2 cards dealt to you at holdem and assigning a preflop value to them.

First off, you are going to get 3 cards dealt to you.

Secondly, not only do you have to assess your 3 cards, you then have to look around the table and view your opponent’s upcards and based on what you see and what you know of their betting habits on 3rd street (and your position, of course) , you have to assign a value to your hand. A hand like KKA is completely unplayable in one situation and a must-raise hand in another situation.

I guess first off, you need to know what sort of hand you want to end up with. Here is a short list of the best hands in Razz, in order (best at top, not-so-best at bottom):

5432A
6432A
6532A
6542A
6543A
65432
7432A
7532A
7542A
7543A
75432
7632A
7642A
7643A
76432
7652A
7653A
7654A
76542
76543

The best hand “5432A” is often referred to as a bike, and bike is easier to type than 5432A so please commit that term to memory, I may just end up saying it a few more times.

The hands I listed above are all the hands 7 low or better. If you have one of these hands you will win most of the time, but it is so very important to pay attention to what your opponent may be drawing to. Razz is all about pressing home small advantages so don’t be pressing home unless you know you have that advantage. This is a game where a player who overbets his hand will find himself losing a large pot in a game where it can sometimes be tough to win a large pot. I have forgotten this piece of advice recently and need to reapply this to my razz game... believe me this lapse has cost me. Razz is about staying in control of the minutiae whereas nlhe is often played with a sledgehammer. In other words, a moments lapse of judgement can not be made up the next hand as readily as in NL holdem, but on the other hand for the player who doesn’t care for the flashy win of a big pot and is more concerned about steadily increasing his bankroll Razz may be the game for you.

I was playing Razz with Howard Lederer one night over at Full Tilt and two things came up in the conversation that I put into memory. At one point another player told Howard that they wanted to turn pro. That they had started at .01/.02 and had moved up to $1/$2 which is what we were playing at the time and they figured in another year they would be beating the $5/$10 game. Howard replied that when he first started playing poker that he conquered the $2/$4 tables pretty quick but it took him another ten years to consistently beat the $5/$10 table.

The other player then mentioned that he was planning on becoming a pro specializing in Razz, to which Howard replied that in his opinion Razz was a great game to turn pro on because there is so much less variance to the game than in other forms of poker.

From this conversation I deduced 2 things:

#1: Razz is a game where a good player can consistently win. So far I am either proving Howard right, or I am the luckiest donk in this hemisphere. Which brings us to point #2.

#2: If you ever get the chance to play with a pro, make it Lederer. He honestly does try to help other people improve their games and he is a good teacher. I remember a PPT episode where he gave a player next to him some sound advice during the game.

Anyways, back to starting hands:

Possibly the most important aspect of a good starting hand is what others hold in their hands. If you have 345 and are facing a raise… or maybe even under the gun and you look around the table and see A,A,2,2,6 showing in the doors of the other players, this is a great time to fold. I mean think about it, yeah you have great starters but what are you going to catch to improve? Yes you are drawing to a rough 5, which is no the worst place in the world to be… but you only have 2 aces and 2 deuces left to catch and a 6 is gone too. Odds are that the best hand you are going to catch is an 87543 and that probably wont be good enough.

Take that same hand 3,4,5 and have doors showing like this: K,T,4,9,3… you are in far better shape… not an ideal hand but one worth seeing a few more cards. Now I know you are looking at this example and seeing that all your outs are live but the other thing that improves your situation is that fact that the player with the 4 showing has to draw a 5 and a 3 to hit the nuts and you hold one of each of those cards and you already know that another player holds another of the cards needed. This is a good thing. You are holding blocking cards on both your opponents and your opponents hold blocking cards against each other but (as far as you know) they do not hold any blocking cards on you.

See why Razz starting hands are more complicated than holdems? So many people say Razz is too simple a game for them, but I think the real problem is that the players don’t understand the intricacies of the game.

Hmm I think that’s about it for now.

As many of you know I started my own site a while back and I don’t really have the time to dedicate to this, especially since interest is so low. At first I thought there was a higher level of interest in Razz in this forum but after a while I saw the same people posting the same questions (in multiples of 3) and realised they just wanted passwords.

Hopefully I have helped some of you learn the game of razz a bit.

I wouldn’t recommend following my advice ad verbatim as situations in different games require different strategies. I gave you a solid base to play loose low limit games and once you feel comfortable there move to a higher level and adjust your play as needed.
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