Play Badugi Poker

Marcus Aurelius - How to Play Badugi

He ruled the Roman empire for 19 years and was nicknamed “The-Wise”. He would have torn your home game up! He didn’t play Badugi but he has given us some valuable poker lessons.

Here are some of his quotes and we can apply them to the poker table.

• You have power over your mind - not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength - Marcus Aurelius

You can’t control the cards.  The only thing you have control over at the poker table is yourself.  

• Confine yourself to the present - Marcus Aurelius

Focus your energy on your current hand. Thinking about the bad beat you just took is wasting brainpower, it’s in the past and there is nothing you can do to change it.  If you could master this philosophy you would never tilt and you would be able to think clearly all the time.

• Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth - Marcus Aurelius

Beware of deception.  You are being told a story, do you believe it?

• I have often wondered how it is that every man loves himself more than all the rest of men, but yet sets less value on his own opinions of himself than on the opinions of others  - Marcus Aurelius

Who is your greatest foe at the poker table?  You are.  Don’t let your ego get in the way of your poker decisions, do not be afraid to back up your feeling with your chips. 

• The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane - Marcus Aurelius

The object of POKER is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.

• Despise not death, but welcome it, for nature wills it like all else - Marcus Aurelius

This applies more to Tournament play than cash games.  Do not be afraid to bust out if you find a good situation to put your chips in the middle.

Next Article >> How to play 459Q from the button by Julias Ceasar.

Snowing in Badugi

It’s a bit late to be dreaming of a white Christmas but when you play Badugi it’s snowing all around you.

I’ll start off with explaining what a snow actually is.  A snow is the term used in draw poker when a player without a made hand stands pat & doesn’t draw any further cards.  What is this lunacy you ask?  Well the idea is to deceive your opponents into thinking you have a made hand so you can steal a pot.  If it works then celebrate!  We are immediately better off but if we get looked up that’s still good for us in the long term.

If our snow is unsuccessful and we do get to showdown our opponents will now be put off balance.  They will be forced to call us down more often because if they don’t adjust we can rob them blind.

The vast majority of players don’t snow enough and some pick some really horrible places to do it.  I’ll highlight some situations were you can pick up lots of chips and confuse your foes on the table. 

Pre-draw when you pick up 4 suited cards.

At first glance you will think 5h6h8h9h is a horrible hand to play in Badugi, but with a little imagination it can still be highly profitable.  

You won’t get 4 cards of the same suit very often so adding them to our snow range will make us much harder to read (because we will be bluffing randomly when we get them).  We also get the added benefit of it being that much harder for our opponents to complete their hand.  Not all of the time but it will still have an effect:

As an example our opponent has Ac3s7d so they are looking for a heart to make a Badugi.  Against a typical opponent he is looking to make a J or better Badugi before he is willing to showdown against a pre-draw pat hand.

Our villan has 10 outs to make a Badugi (the 2h,4h,5h,6h,8h,9h,Th,Jh,Qh,Kh) they will generally discount the Kh & Qh leaving them with 8 outs.  However since we have 4 of their cards in our hand they are now drawing to only 4 outs!

Even if your opponent will chase all 3 draws he will only have a 23% chance of making his hand.  Which means our snow would work 77% of the time.  Usually most opponents will fold if they haven’t hit by the 2^nd draw so that further increases our chance of winning to 84% Only one word is needed to describe this situation & that word is “KERCHING!*”

Against weakness.

Did your opponent just draw 2 cards on the 2^nd draw.  Now is a great time to consider snowing, your opponent is weak, HE knows it, YOU know it.  Lets take this pot down now, stand pat & bet out. Your opponent will almost definitely fold now or after the 3^rd draw.

When not to snow

If there have been re-raises on the 1^st or 2^nd draw your opponent is telling you he likes his hand.  If you were to stand pat on the 3^rd draw & try to steal you will get looked up a lot.

If your opponent ever stands pat & checks the snow attempt is over.  They have made a weak Badugi but are reluctant to fold, just check & showdown remember its good to get caught every once in a while.

As you can see snowing is a very powerful weapon so make sure you add it to your game when you play badugi. 

 * Orginates from north Korea, translates to “make lotto money”

Heads-up Pots in Badugi

Our last article focused on multi-way hands so this time I’m going to write about the differences in how we’d play hands when the pot gets to be heads-up. I’ll start with an example: We are playing limit Badugi and are on the big blind with the hand Ac3d8s3s:

Situation 1:

The first player to act raises, 3 other people call so we are left with a decision. Our hand is too weak to re-raise and too strong to fold. The pot is offering us great odds so we decide to call. Now for the hard part, how many cards should we draw?

We could drop 2 cards and hope to try and make a nut type hand but that won’t really be necessary to win the pot most of the time. If we are drawing 2 cards it’s even less likely we will make a Badugi with the first draw, which is when our hand will be most valuable. An 8 low Badugi will scope most of the time even multi-way, if you lose its just a little bad variance. So we decide to draw 1 card, hopefully make our hand and win a nice pot.

Situation 2:

The first player to act raises and everyone folds around to you. Now what? Again we are in that situation too weak to re-raise & too strong to fold so again we call.

How many cards should we draw? An 8 high Badugi would win HU most of the time as well but what you should realize is that more often than not a good 3 card Badugi will win in HU situations. A38 has no showdown value HU so this time we will change 2 cards hoping to make a good 3 card hand early. If we don’t then its no huge loss, our implied odds were good but it didn’t work out.

If we are playing PL Badugi situation 2 would be an instant fold since we are showing so much weakness it makes it very easy for the villain in the hand to put pressure on us. Situations like this make for a good snow attempt.

Snowing: This is when a player will stand pat and bluff that they have a made Badugi. There will be an article on snowing in the very near future so stay tuned.