Six Plus Hold’em (6+ Hold’em) is a popular ‘short deck’ poker format that plays much like Texas Hold’em, but with a few exciting differences:
- All cards lower than a six are removed from the deck
- Everyone posts an ante and only the button posts a blind – known as the ‘button blind’
- A flush beats a full-house and Ace, 6, 7, 8, 9 is classified as a straight
Often called Six Plus Hold’em as well, this new variation owes its popularity to the highest stakes games played by top pros that are available on YouTube. Similar to full deck poker in many aspects, yet more fast-paced and action-packed, Shot Deck Hold’em poker is booming lately. Short Deck (six plus) is hold’em game which only uses ‘A,K,Q,J,T,9,8,7,6’ cards. Betting actions are same as general hold’em. But there are some changes in hand ranking!
The Rules of 6+ Hold’em
All 6+ Hold’em games use a 36-card deck (with all cards lower than a 6 removed), which is shuffled before every hand is dealt. Games also use a ‘button blind’ structure: every player posts an ante, and the player seated at the button position is the only one who posts a blind – meaning there is only one blind per hand, rather than traditional small/big blind format.
The action starts with the player seated to the left of the button. Each hand then plays out according to Texas Hold’em rules, with pre-flop, flop, turn and river betting rounds.
If you’ve played Texas Hold’em games before, the rules of 6+ Hold’em are easy to follow.
But don’t forget: contrary to regular Texas Hold’em games, in 6+ Hold’em a flush beats a full-house. A five-card hand consisting of Ace, 6, 7, 8, 9 (any suit) is also deemed a straight. All other hand rankings remain the same.
Differences in 6+ Hold’em play
With fewer cards in the deck that obviously means a few difference to regular hold’em.
For instance, with only nine cards for each suit, a flush in 6+ Hold’em beats a full house. You’ll also notice you flop sets a lot more – 17% of the time to be exact (as opposed to 11.8% in regular hold’em).
You’ll also make more full houses.
That’ll seem great to start with, but you’ll quickly discover that 6+ Hold’em hands get big fast.
Learn How to Play 6+ Hold’em for Free
If you want to learn how to play 6+ Hold’em, then download the poker software and join any of the free poker games where you can play online against other players. Unlike the real money poker games, since there is nothing at stake, you can be comfortable learning the ropes of the game and all the rules of 6+ Hold’em. We hope to see you in the poker room, and good luck at the tables!
In the first part of the article we looked at Six plus Hand Rankings, where it became clear that the 16 cards missing from the deck in this variant leads to a slight, but important, changes in how strong the starting hands are which we will receive.
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Pocket Aces
If we look at traditional Texas Hold’em starting hands, we would expect to get our beloved AA about once every 221 hands, so what about in our new version of the game?
Well, without troubling you with the maths (I CAN do it, honestly!) the answer is you’ll get your pocket rockets once every 105 hands, which is more than twice as often as in Texas Hold’em!
Naturally, what goes for aces also goes for the other pairs – you’ll have a pocket pair more than twice as regularly in Six plus Hold’em (as will your opponent! Don’t forget this important consideration).
Are there any other changes we need to know about regarding starting hands?
Six Plus Hold'em Strategy
Let's Say We have JJ
A naturally tricky starting hand in Texas Hold’em, but one we would probably open-raise with pre-flop. How does it fare in Six Plus?
We need to realize that instead of beating nine other pairs pre-flop, now it is only a favorite against 5, and still a dog to QQ, KK and AA. So it is not as strong in this respect.
However, because 3 of a kind now beats a straight in Six Plus, flopping a set becomes very strong against many hands – flushesare harder to come by, as we saw previously, because there are only nine cards of any single suit available in the deck.
So, how often will our smaller pairs flop a set? In Texas Hold’em it’s about 11.8% or roughly one time in eight. In Six Plus, we will do the maths quickly (just to prove I can!)
There are 36 cards in the pack, we have – let’s say again – JJ in our hand. So there are two jacks left in the 34 remaining cards.
What About the Hated 72 Offsuit?
In traditional Texas Hold’em this is the worst starting hand, and almost completely unplayable. Well, as you can probably work out yourself quite easily, in Six Plus the equivalent hand is J 6 offsuit, which, let’s be honest, would rarely be played even in our normal game!
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Playing AK Becomes an 'Interesting' Problem
Well, first off, we will be dealt AK about 2.5% of our hands – which is quite a lot of the time, maybe once every five or six rounds at a full ring table, so it’s important enough to learn its worth in Six Plus Hold’em.
If we accept that suited versions become a lot more valuable - flushes beat full houses in our new version - then it can also make sense to play AKs slower than usual. Mixing our game up with AKs hides our play better, while AKo is still a very strong hand which we can 3-bet and even consider stacking off with.
Small Pairs
Of course 66 now becomes the smallest pocket pair. In Texas Hold’em we could consider calling pre-flop raises with this hand if the price was right – flopping a set and cracking a higher pair is our main goal – but now we have to consider that we are essentially playing 22 in a game where set-over-set sees our 6’s screwed, although on the plus side they do now beat straights!
Relative Hand Values
We need to be aware that these change a fair bit from Texas Hold’em, since stronger hands in general are being played across the board. Top pair, top kicker is nowhere near as strong – in fact it is very unlikely to win on its own as a best hand at showdown in 6-max or full-ring when we play Six Plus Hold’em.
There is also the ‘alternative river version’ of the game to consider, when receiving an extra hole card means that hand strengths can become stronger still.
So, in general two pair would be a median winning hand at full-ring – a useful thing to know when planning your hand strategy!
We will look at the change in Pot Odds in part 3, but a casual glance at things like ‘drawing hands’ shows that we are more likely to his many of them, as we have fewer cards left containing the same number of outs. For example, a gutshot – where any of four cards hits for us – now gives us 4/31 chances to hit after the flop, as opposed to 4/47 in Texas Hold’em – a significant difference indeed!
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