Baduci

There's a new poker game being played at the Bike called Baduci. Supposedly, it's being played at Commerce and the Bellagio, as well, but at the Bike it is usually played at $30-60 limit stakes.

Baduci is a split-pot combination of badugi and deuce-to-seven triple draw. In both badugi and 2-7, players have three draws and try for the low hand. In badugi, you need four different suits, so the best hand is A234 of different suits. In baduci, though, A is always high (at least, the way it is played at the Bike), so the best hand is 2345. In baduci, half the pot goes to the best four-card "badugi" hand, and the other half to the best five-card 2-7 hand.

I like playing new poker games. It forces me to concentrate intently and work out strategies, which is my favorite part of poker in general. However, 30-60 is way too expensive for me to try an entirely new game, even if there are known fish at the table. So, some other props and I have started playing 5-10 baduci until customers show up to play the $500 NL game. This past week I played a total of 4 hours and lost about $50. Sometimes other people will join us for our baduci game - on Friday, I was the only prop playing, but I played heads up for over an hour and won $39.