General HORSE Strategy Points

If you are interested in becoming a good HORSE poker player, then there are a number of finer strategy points that you need to learn. However, for the beginning HORSE poker player, it is sufficient to take a look at the overall way in which the game is played and try to learn as much about it as possible. To that end, below are some of the general strategy points that you should consider when sitting down at a HORSE poker table.

Basic HORSE Strategy

The first strategy point to consider has to do with game specialties. Now, it is impossible to be a good HORSE poker player without having a good skill level in all of the five poker variants that are played in HORSE, but at the same time most people will have one or two variants that they really excel at. This usually corresponds to whichever game they happened to learn first, which means that if you happen to be a Razz or a Stud/8 poker player by trade, your specialty is going to be within the minority as opposed to people that came to H.O.R.S.E from Hold ‘Em, Omaha or Stud.

One of the things that you should consider doing, especially when you are a beginner HORSE player, is to change gears depending on the variant that you are playing. For example, if you happen to be a limit Hold ‘Em specialist and you are learning the other four variants in order to switch to being a HORSE player, play very aggressive when you are in the H of the HORSE and then play somewhat more passive when you are in the other four. HORSE is really a trial by fire variant and therefore if you want to play like a rock while you learn the appropriate levels of aggressive strategy for each game, there is certainly nothing wrong with doing so.

Additionally, you want to try and find the variants that other people are weak in. There is generally one round that each player does not like playing in and the key is to figure out what that round might be and then exploit that player by continually putting pressure on them during that round of HORSE poker play. People tend to be very timid when playing in a mode that they deem themselves to be weak in and of course when an aggressive player plays against a timid player, the aggressive player will almost always win.