HORSE Poker Starting Hand Selection

As you may already have guessed, starting hand selection in HORSE poker games are dependent on what game variant you are playing. While at the intermediate levels of your HORSE play you can make deviations based on the strengths/weaknesses of other players around you, when you are a beginning HORSE player you want to be relatively careful in the way you enter hands. With that in mind, here are basic starting hand selection strategies for the different HORSE poker variants.

Limit Hold ‘Em: When playing limit hold ‘em in a HORSE context, it is important that you play tight-aggressive in the cash games. Pick your spots and extract maximum coinage from the spots that you pick. In early position, you can play pairs of 9-9 or higher and then any two high cards of jack or higher. As you progressively get to later positions, you can downgrade the high card ranks by one for middle and late position and the pairs by two. Additionally, from late position and with a lot of limpers, feel free to play suited and connected cards.

Limit Omaha: You should always look for cards that work well together like two suited connecting cards or 4 high cards (jack or above). As a player of Omaha in the HORSE poker context, you should only enter the pot with four solid cards in early position and middle position, but you can knock that down to two cards in late position with a large pot being built up. Remember to limit the amount of hands you play in Omaha, due to the fact that after a flop many people will have draws.

Razz: Razz is a tougher nut to crack than hold ‘em or Omaha, but for the most part you should approach Razz in HORSE poker as you would in a Razz cash game. Do not play any hand unless all three cards in that hand are eight or lower and make sure that you raise as much as possible if two of the cards happen to be part of the nut low for that particular game.

Seven-Card Stud: In seven-card stud HORSE poker, you want to play all trips, high pairs, straight flush draws and high straight and flush draws.

Seven-Card Stud Hi/Lo: Hi/Lo is basically a combination of the two previous variants and in HORSE poker it is usually the game that people have the most difficulty with. When you play Stud/8 poker (short-form for the full name of the variant) in HORSE, you want to enter the pot with hands that have a good chance to win either the high or the low. This makes cards like lower straight draws goldmines in this game. However, don’t feel hesitant about going after either just the high or just the low, especially if there are a lot of people in the hand.