Posted by Dr Fro 5:34 PM
The other night at our poker game, I was wrong when I explained H.O.R.S.E. Here is the skinny:
In a H.O.R.S.E. poker game or tournament event, the kind of poker played in each round rotates as follows:
Razz is a seven-card stud poker game where instead of the highest hand winning, the lowest or worst hand wins the pot. The lowest hand in Razz is A-2-3-4-5, because straights and flushes don't count against a hand being low, and aces are counted as low. The ace to five straight is also called "the bike" or "the wheel," and is the best possible low hand. Unlike split-pot hi-lo games like Omaha 8, Razz doesn't have an "eight or better" component to it's play.
In 2006, the World Series of Poker introduced a $50,000 buy-in H.O.R.S.E. event (all games played with structured limits) and rotated games after each hour-long round until the final table, when they switched to no-limit hold'em.