Hold'em in a dealer's choice scenario

Anyone play dealer's choice games and have the dealer call for texas hold'em? What do you do about blinds?

Obviously it wouldn't be fair to play one hand, since the two to the left of the dealer are at a disadvantage having to post blinds. It would only be fair if you did a full orbit of hold'em, but then it wouldn't be dealer's choice. I'm thinking you just have everyone ante and play as though it were stud or whatever. Anyone have any experience, insight on this?

 

I just do full orbits for every choice in my games. Antes for stud and draw, blinds for HE and O.

So 8 hands of hold'em, then 8 hands of stud, 8 hands of chicago...

and then my choice of O/8 which is always preceeded by lots of groaning.

 

For blind games, we always do a full orbit.

For ante games, single hand.

This way everyone gets to call their choice and nobody has to bet more than any other person.

 

we do full orbits of games too.

 

Mmm, all this talk about full orbits. . . where's souldigger, or zerolux?

 

I havn't looked at the others yet but what we do is play an entire round of hold em if called. That way everyone pays a blind.

Justin

 

Thanks guys, sounds like a consensus. Someone calls holdem, you do an entire orbit.

I kinda like the idea of a full orbit for each game called though, interesting idea. Does the person who called it act as the dealer for the entire orbit, while you rotate a button?

 

The last time we did play Dealer's Choice (many moons ago) we did play Hold 'Em as a dealer called single hand game. We did it with everyone anteing. One thing I discovered is that Hold 'Em doesn't really lend itself to being played one hand and done. Especially with the amount of folding I normally do!

One problem when we play Dealer's Choice is that we always end up playing a ton of the wacky games like Guts, 727, God, etc. You can do pretty well at the hands of Draw or Stud and then lose everything in one hand of Guts.

Not to hijack the thread, but when you guys do Dealer's Choice games, do you limit the game selection? Personally, I'd love to play a HORSE type cash game or at least have the games limited to those and maybe Draw. With a mix of ante and blind games though, it still looks like you'd need to play each game for an orbit.

 

Not hijacking at all! When we do a dealer choice night, there are all kinds of wacky games involved. Many that we just came up with ourselves. That's what makes it fun. We'll do something like holdem or 7card stud for a pallette cleanser after things like mexican sweat, 7 card follow the queen, or my personal screw-with-your-mind favorite 7 card stud hi-lo with the low card in your hand (up or down) being wild. You can have the nuts and have it blow up on the last card so it can be a riot.

 

We also have a couple of wacky games (who wants to play Scoooooppppp) that just don't lend themselves to a full orbit; who wants to play 8 or 9 hands of 5-card draw in a row anyways. This is why ante games are usually just a single deal.

 

I limit my dealer's choice games to HORSE plus Draw, 5 stud and Chicago.

Come to think of it, Razz has never been called before. It's now on my "to do" list. (Note, I'm also the only one that calls O8, and that's always met with groaning). Hehe.

 

We would either do a whole orbit for each game or we limit it to blind games only but recently, all we play is holdem.

 

My rule for dealer's choice is, "If you can show me it's spread in a card room or on an online poker site, we can play it." The wildest thing possible is pineapple. I like it this way... if people keep calling pineapple I call razz or KC lowball draw. Bastards. Usually we just play NLHE anyway, dealer's choice nights are few and far between but I'm sure not going to learn the strategy for guts or any strange wildcard game.

 

That seems like a pretty good rule. As much as I like HE, there are still times when I'd like to mix in some variety. We did play a Pineapple tournament during this last season though. Good times.


That poor dog...

 

We play dealers choice for all our cash games. What we do is dealer post a live blind of $5(you can make yours $1, $2, $3 ect...) He calls the game and the stakes(Ex.. He may call 5-10 Pineapple H/L or Pot-limit Omaha H/L). If a stud game is called the dealer will post double the usual bet and everyone antes the standard bet if they want to play. I am not crazy about playing a full orbit unless the table is short-handed. We usually play with 8-10 around the table so a full orbit can take a while playing anything but holdem

 

There's an interesting solution. Dealer calls for hold'em and he posts the big blind. That's doable, never thought of that.

 

Our Dealer's Choice games are just that...dealer's choice. It doesn't matter what kind of insane rules go along with the game, he has to explain it, and the rest have to learn it. The only problem with this is sometimes there are a lot of rule explanations mid way in the hand. But the guys who play at my game all have their favorites and after playing the game two or three times you get the hang of the really weird ones.

My personal favorite is Football, 2's match the pot or fold, 4's pay to get a bonus card, 6 wild.

or

Lowball- Murderers Row is wild!

 

whoops, missed this post.

I use the dealer button to indicate "choice", everyone deals a hand of the game. When the deck comes back to the button, he skips the deal and passes both to the next person. i.e. I call holdem for my choice and deal. The guy to my left posts SB. When the person to my right finishes dealing (I just posted the SB), I grab both the deck and the button and pass them to the guy on my left. It looks a little funny but it gives everyone equal blind equity and I don't get to deal twice.

 

in my dealers choice game we dont even do the blinds... we post antes and do a free flop... which is kinda stupid but gets the games going faster haha

 

Dealers Choice

We used to play you play the dealer's choice for a whole round and that would go for everybodys choice of games. After doing that for a while, All we play is holdem. It ended up killing all of the other games.