Last night we broke out of the rut and opened up the last hour of play to non hold ’em games. We dusted off Anaconda, Heinz 57, Baseball, Little League, 357, Roll Your Own High Chicago Kings and Low-men, the Jake, and Follow the Queen, and the pots instantly escalated to stack-devastating amounts. I had the second best hand in at least three different games and ended down a few bucks for the night:

Anaconda Hi-Lo: Heads up, Kings full of Jacks going down to Aces full of Fives. Cavebutter raked the whole pot with his low hand also beating mine.

Baseball: Heads up, five Queens going down to five Kings.

Some other game: My hand, second best again to the winning hand. Ugh.

Considering the size of the pots in these games, I think I did reasonably well in the other games, since I could have easily been out my entire buy-in.

There was also an unusual Roll Your Own game where both players at the showdown had five aces, but one had the King for Chicago, resulting in a 25-75 split that caused a little grumbling. It’s easy to forget how Chicago can sometimes make the nuts worth less than half the pot.

After months and months of almost exclusively playing Hold ‘Em, it was hard for players to recognize the strength of hands, and the likelihood of improvement. This, combined with the size of the pots, caused some of the group to fold more quickly than they would have back when we were playing these games more regularly. Probably a good thing. One rule change we might consider is ditching the spread limit and no cap betting we typically have in games with lots of betting like Anaconda and Roll Your Own.