Mike Caro

Razz.  I love Razz, as Ted Forrest called it: "The purest form of poker."

HORSE after that becuase it keeps my interest and I can play tight, be just medium-okay and still win a few pots in my not best games while being a lot better than most players in the ones I'm good at.  Well.. one, I guess. .

PLO after that because it reninds me of Razz only it pays off better faster. But it's very swingy.

I love poker, though.  I'm all happy just to sit at a low limit LHE in a casino and shove chips around.

I never played cards but started going to casinos and began playing BJ and craps. I would pass by the poker rooms and see players in there, but never had the desire to play poker until I began watching the World Poker Tour.

So after a few  years of reading, studying and figuring out that the World Poker Tour poker was different poker than I was going to experience at my $50 Buyin NL Holdem Tournaments and my 4/8 Limit games , I finally began playing Holdem in casino cardrooms this year.

Holdem is my only game.

5 card draw. I was fascinated by this game ever since I was introduced to it as a child. I didn't play much poker until recently (it is still not really legal in the part of the world I'm living in). NL Hold'em dominates online poker rooms these days, and I'm kinda forced to play it. It is not like I'm not enjoying playing hold'em, but it is not near the feeling I get than I play draw poker. And my passion for the game brought me to poker1 – I know how Mike Caro feels about the game. 

Criss-cross Hi-Low 8.  Criss-cross is played as follows: five cards to each player, then five cards on the board in a cross fashion — three cards horizontally beside each other (like a flop in hold 'em/omaha), then one card above the middle position and one below, all face down.  You can use either the three horizontal cards or the three vertical cards to help your hand.  Play starts with one of the outside cards turned up and a betting round follows.  The remaining board cards are then turned face-up in either a clockwise or counter-clockwise direction, but the direction must be consistent so that neither the horizontal nor the vertical cards have an advantage.  The center card, which swings both ways, is turned last.  We play with rotating betting, i.e. each betting round is started by a different player, moving further and further to the left of the dealer.  When I first started playing every round of betting was forced (bet or fold), giving a huge advantage to good hands, which could virtually gurantee themselves a raise, punishing the weaker hands.  This was ok when we were playing for quarters but as we increased the limits and people were losing a lot of money we had to change the rules to include checking.  I prefer it the other way.

I introduced a variation that seemed to stick, and the more I play it the more I love it.  Same game, but split the pot hi-hand/low-hand (I specify "hand" because these people like to play hi-card or low-card as well, meaning that a player holding the high card in the suit of the middle board card gets half the pot).  And we play with an 8 qualifier.

Sometimes we play the double-cross, which is two crosses and you can use either one.  And then there's the double-cross H/L8 – and even this has variations, use either cross for hi or low, or the dealer will specify which cross can be used for hi and which for low.  Then there's the super cross where each branch of the normal cross gets two additional cards, one on the left and one on the right, and one on the top and one on the bottom.  And then there's…

Anyway, my favorite game is the Criss-cross Hi-Low-8.

Exactly!  Now imagine having twice the action waiting on that center card when there could be two winners.

We play one we call slider.  Imagine nine cards in a box pattern, three rows of three cards.  Now put two more cards on the end adjacent to the middle row.  These two cards "slide" up or down as you need them, and you can use any row of five cards with your hole cards.  It's like hold 'em with three flops, and you can play the turn and river cards with any flop you wish.  Five betting rounds.  Each column gets turned over, one column at a time followed by a bet, and then the turn and river separately.  Or you could bet before any board cards are flipped, then do all nine in the box at the same time, then the turn and river, for a total of four betting rounds.  It sounds ridiculous, more like bingo than poker, but just as with any game, the good hands in the beginning generally get paid off by weaker hands at the end.

Add hi-low-8 to that and it takes a masters in game theory to split the dam pot!