The Stud/8 revolution
So, first of all; it’s been quiet around here. August went pretty sour after my last post, and I finished the month on a small loss. This had the usual detrimental effect on my workrate (and blograte) and now I’m hardly playing my bread and butter stuff at all.
I’m playing Stud/8 instead. This is a game that I’ve been trying to get my head around for years, with very little success; I’ve read Ray Zee, I’ve messed around in micro low limit cashgames, and I’ve encountered the game in HORSE, and I’ve never been able to understand it… until the other day, when I decided to enter a Stars Stud/8 freeroll. Four hours later, I had qualified for a proper tournament (scant reward for four hours of limit tournament play, but better than nothing), and more importantly, I finally understood Stud/8.
Or at least, I think I did; the usual caveats apply with regard to the deceptive nature of poker success. Four hours of superswingy hi-lo madness does not an expert make. However, it gave me some confidence to try some slightly higher limit ring games, and even better, it gave me the confidence to play HORSE sit n gos.
My pre-epiphany HORSE strategy would be pretty straightforward; punish the fish on the games I’m good at (O8 and Razz, and to a lesser extent, Hold’em – I hate LHE in tournaments, and it’s the one game where the average HORSE fish knows what to do), and then sit the hell back during the Stud and Stud/8 rounds. This is a pretty sucky strategy, obviously, so I pretty much stopped playing HORSE.
However, with my new found confidence and maybe-skills, Stud/8 is the HORSE round I most look forward to, and my straight Stud play has also improved of late, meaning LHE is now my least favourite game in HORSE. I genuinely didn’t see *that* coming, but now that it has, I’m delighted; since my Stud/8 epiphany, I have a 100% ITM record in HORSE sngs (admittedly over a very small sample, but still), and it’s rapidly becoming a candidate for bread and butter game status. And given my somewhat bruising experiences last month, it’s main competition for that place is not from NLHE tournaments, but Stud/8 ringgames.
STUD/8! It’s the future. Maybe.
The Poker Moth 
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