ANACONDA - The greatest test of your poker skills??

[johnbaker3]

The popularity of No Limit Texas Hold'em is pretty impressive; both the big cash players and the hometown poker locals rave over how much fun it is to play...but IMHO the game of Anacoda is the best challenge to anyone's TRUE poker skills!

I say this after having played the game since 1970...when you're on a Coast Guard cutter in the middle of the Pacific for 30 days at a time you learn to play poker or just go nutso...

Anaconda is a variation of 5/7 card stud...its the variations that make it unique in several ways. First of all, it is a High/Low split pot. Secondly, the hands are shown up, one card at a time (after you carefully arrange them for maximum effect). The game is limited to 7 players because, on the initial deal, everyone gets 7 cards...(49 out of 52 cards are used each round).

So here goes a typical hand:

Everyone antes a small amount of say $3 in chips (you now get to see a total of 10 cards for that $3....7+3 after the pass)

1. You're dealt 7 cards; you get the A,3,5,7,9,10, J of various suits; you choose to go LOW but now you have to pass THREE cards to the left (right the next hand)...
2. You pass the 9,10,J and receive in its place a 2,4,6 of various suits...
3. You now determine you got the NUT low hand of A,2,3,4,5 and throw away 2 cards (the 6,7) into the muck.
4. You now arrange your best 5 cards in the reverse order of 5,4,3,2,A and place them in front.
5. Once everyone else has done the same, the first cards are turned over together in STUD format. Betting goes around (ususally 3 raise limit) and you watch carefully to determine who is going HIGH and who is going LOW (your arch enemies!) You do this 4 times...
6. Once the betting is done after the 4th card up, everyone grabs 3 chips, puts their hands under the table and prepares to declare...1 for LOW, 2 for HIGH, 3 for BOTH ways...
7. Everyone places their right fist on the table and opens up simutaneously to declare their hands...
8. All hands with LOW showdown, winner gets half the pot...HIGHS showdown and winner gets the other half...

Now, if some smarty pants has the A,2,3,4,5 of hearts and goes both ways (no flushes or straights for low)...there's gonna be some hootin and hollerin...he only wins if he has the BEST hand both ways...NO TIES...

It all sounds pretty straight forward...but trust me...the nuiances are gonna drive you silly.

Here are some scenarios that I have seen many times...

1) 2 people drop out early...of the 5 left, 4 declare HIGH and somebody with a K in his hand wins LOW because NOBODY challenged him...

2) 5 people drop out early and its heads up...one person declares the WRONG way and the other guy gets the whole pot without declaring BOTH ways...

3) 3 people go HIGH and all 3 have Full Houses...lots of chips leave your stack...

4) One person shows on the table 5,K,K,K and on showdown has 4 KINGS...

In summation, alot of Texas Holdem games are 30 minutes of boredom broken up by 5 minutes of shear terror...Anaconda guarantees some awesome hands almost every round. Everyone has a shot of splitting half the pot every round; and it keeps everyone in till the 3rd or 4th card on many occasions...

If you're tired of the same old tournaments month after month, invite 6 of your closest friends over a game of ANACONDA (or as my poker buddies call it "Pass The Trash" and watch the fur fly!!

I'll post some advanced stratagies in the coming days...not too much at once or I'll spoil all the fun!

Take care,
John B

[ky70]

Sounds like a great game but the passing of cards to another players hand I don't particularly like...and I also don't like variations where split pots are common, so I'll  disagree (based on what I've read) on this being a better test of poker skills but maybe I'll give it try and find out.

[On The Button]

I've played this game.

It's great fun when drunk, but not a "pure game" like NLHE is.

I burned out on it only after about 10 hands. NLHE we play until sunrise. 

[johnbaker3]

OK...now for a few tips on things you may not have even considered when you were trying to win this game:

1) MEMORIZE your passed cards because you will see at least 1 of them again at the showdown! It takes 5 cards to make a hand, and one or more came on the pass...

2) Try not to pass good high cards if you're also going high; don't pass good low cards if you're going low...this may sound obvious, but you may have to change your pass rather than give the enemy 3 hearts or a high pair!

3) Pay to see the first couple of cards if you can; sometimes everyone else goes high or everyone goes low...all you have to do is declare in the opposite way and you get half the pot...the cards don't matter!

4) Good pairs to hold are 8,9,10's...sometimes you can catch quads when everyone is throwing them away trying to improve EITHER a high or low option...

Give this game a chance...you may not appreciate its special nuiances for several months or years...it takes a good poker player to see all the possibilities!

Take care,
John B

[johnbaker3]

Next on my list of special attractions of this game is trying to understand the "Roll Your Own" feature ...

After the pass is completed, you dump 2 cards into the muck. Now you get to arrange your 5 best cards so as to maximize the impression of your hand...just like in all poker, you don't have to have the best hand to win, you only have to convince your opponents that you have it...

Very few hands are perfect, but you would never know that by only getting to see the first 4 cards before declaration!

If you go low, always keep your highest card for last, unless you have "The Wheel"..then it may catch more fish if you roll them as A,2,4,5,...3...its human nature to think that the inside straight is harder to fill...and you are less likely to go both ways...

If you go high with a Full House, show them as Q,Q,5,5....Q   Make them guess whether or not you have it ...

Its tough to hide QUADS....you can only try   7,9,9,9....9  without giving it away. If you only have 3 of a kind, this might really scare some people if you bet it strong with 7,9,9,9...4!

If you have a strong LOW with lots of the same suit, make it look like a possible flush or straight flush rather than a simple LOW and catch somebody going the wrong way...

The mother of all hands is when you CAN go both ways...remember, that straights and flushes don't count for LOW so A,2,3,4,5 suited wins LOW and HIGH as long as nobody TIES you!! If tied, after you declare BOTH, you get NONE of the pot...If there is the possibilty of a tie for LOW (or God forbid for HIGH) then don't get greedy; take half the pot and head for the next pot with somebody else's money...but I gotta tell ya, there is no sweeter feeling than taking the whole enchilada with a monster!!

Take care, more ideas down the road

John B

[Rick_Smith]

Hi Johnbaker, everyone.
   I've played Anaconda and confess that I don't much care for the passing cards around the table.  However the arranging the cards in which ever order you want puts a lot of tension into the game.  It seems that there is more tension as you see what looks like random cards suddenly start taking on straight possibilites.

   Does anyone know poker variations that uses the idea of how Anaconda arranges your cards, with out the passing cards back and forth?

   Thanks for the thread John, I had almost forgotten about this variation before I saw your post.   Regards, Rick

[johnbaker3]

Rick:

I don't know of a variation w/o passing involved; ironically, I've had a friend tell me about another version:

It starts out with passing 3 to the LEFT; then 2 to the RIGHT; then 1 to the LEFT...

I bet everyone ends up with a MONSTER with this protocol!! I think I'll "pass" on this one; ONE is my limit when I've got to drive home after the game...

Finally, how about inventing your own version that has NO passes...everybody gets 7 cards dealt, throw away 2, roll your best 5...I think that will pass your no-smell test AND have some decent hands to make for some good pots!

Take care,

John B

[Supamanfsk]

I play Anaconda all the time with my friends at our home games and it is a fun game....Drives me crazy when I pass cards and it ends up I would of had quads had I kept them...haha...still do love the game...as frustrating as it is..

[andrewst2]

John:

We play a different version of Anaconda called Pass the Trash. 
Each player is dealt 7 cards
bet.
Pass 4 to the right.
bet.
Pass 3 to the right
bet
Pass 2 to the right
bet
Pass 1 to the right
bet
now we get to the fun part. everyone discards 2 so that we have our best hand.  This is a high/low game so there will be a split pot.
Everyone lays down there cards and flips over the top card.
then we bet.
flip over the second card, etc
when we get to the last card everyone declares if they are going high or low. (A,2,3,4,6) being the best low (no straights).

This is a crazy game and has HUGE pots

scott

[CrazyAc5]

To this game something interesting came up, and I took some serious advantage of it...

I caught Quads... four Nines. I showed the lot down first and kept jamming it. Jamming and jamming and jamming. four people where calling me down, the pot reached a total of $168... of which Half I won since no one declaired hi 'cos of me. They were all going lo'. Thing is I did a lil' testin' and found out if you come up against this play, you should fold since you're odds aren't correct... but how many times does someone openly roll over Quads 

[sunderB]

I used to love this game in my teens, until a couple of friends, proved to us by example, how easy it is to collude with the person next to you by passing them the good cards.  The sad thing is they could have kept doing this to us forever if they had not been so obviuos in splitting up their winnings at the end of the night.  That was the last time I ever played that game, or any other involving the passing of cards (used to be a big fan of pass the trash as well). 

Any time you are playing a game with passing of cards, the risk of collusion is too high in my opinion because it is just too easy to do..   

[Pops28]

I love the game of Anaconda. We have been playing it in our dealers choice games for years (I think I mentioned it in another post a while back even). I don't think I would want to play an Anaconda Tournement but in the dealers choice games it is a big hit. We also have a second name for the game: Pass, Bitch, and Ditch.

[Gobbs]

I used to love this game in my teens, until a couple of (former) friends, proved to us by example, how easy it is to collude with the person next to you by passing them the good cards.  The sad thing is they could have kept doing this to us forever if they had not been so obviuos in splitting up their winnings at the end of the night.  That was the last time I ever played that game, or any other involving the passing of cards (used to be a big fan of pass the trash as well). 

Any time you are playing a game with passing of cards, the risk of collusion is too high in my opinion because it is just too easy to do..   

Whew...as I kept reading the posts, I was afraid nobody was going to mention the obvious....collusion.  Glad somebody did.

If you're looking for a fun parlor game, 727 is the way to go - it incorporates bluffing, skill, and luck.  I'll stick to NLHE, but 727 is a fun game to play when you're waiting around for the next tournament.

Gobbs

[johnbaker3]

Hi again and thanks for all the feedback...

If collusion is a problem, then you're playing with the wrong people...cheating is cheating no matter how its done.

We play with the same 5-7 people every month and it is a part of the house rules...NO form of cheating is allowed and anyone caught will be banned FOREVER...

I'll say it again, the game of ANACONDA is a great change of pace from NLTH and it challenges your skills of reading the table and having a good time too!

John B

[bubbajit]

If collusion is a problem, then you're playing with the wrong people...cheating is cheating no matter how its done.

We play with the same 5-7 people every month and it is a part of the house rules...NO form of cheating is allowed and anyone caught will be banned FOREVER...

John B

I have to agree with John, there no friend to be cheating me out of my money.
Also I do not think John is talking about a group of 30 people getting together for a game, where you only know 8 other guys.  Just a small group of friends geting together for a little something different.
But I'm not trying to speak for him so those are mostly my thoughts.
Have to see if I can get the people I play with to try something different.

[spider]

I have to agree - in Anaconda/Pass the Trash, it's a very good play to hold onto middle cards - 7/8/9.  I ended up getting three 7's in a row to match with my first 7 to show quads.  My neighbor kept working why I was passing him an Ace followed by a King.

I'm also a fan of 727 - definitely a good amount of strategy and gamble involved.

For roll your own games, the game that gets the most groans but is usually fun to play is Auction - especially if there a lot of players.

[johnbaker3]

Hi everyone:

I think I have a solution to avoiding any form of collusion in this game:

Instead of passing 3 to the Left or Right or Across, everyone passes their 3 cards into the muck ! The dealer then resuffles all the mucked cards and deals everyone 3 more cards back...

Just like before, you make your best 5 card hand and dump your 2 leftover cards...

Viola, no chance that cooperating players are helping each other on the pass and hopefully you don't get your own crappy cards back again !

Good luck at the tables and enjoy taking someone else's chips thru skill and cunning alone!

John B

[johnbaker3]

Dear Friends:

I know that this thread is almost 4 years old, but I still like the original points of the thread.

As pointed out by several people, the act of passing to the same people over and over can lead to some issues. Even if everyone is actually honest, you learn quickly if a person has any bias.....i.e. they prefer to go low if possible and always pass "HIGH" cards or vice versa....this gives the smart "receiver" of the pass an obvious edge in the game.

We have converted to a 100% "pass into the muck and re-deal" form and it works. No issues with anything except that you see some of your own cards a second time. Also, you lose the ability of knowing one of the cards that you passed is indeed in your opponents hand.

We play a cash game once a month with dealers choice; this game is by far, the most popular because of the monsters that show up on a regular basis. We are ready to institute "no limit" betting to increase the bluff factor; I'll let you know how that works out !!

Be safe,

John B