Poker Strategies
After receiving pocket cards, you are immediately faced with a choice: play your cards and either raise or call the blinds, or fold.
Practice Matters
The way California Lowball is played
The way California Lowball is played in the clubs varies. Some clubs play the game with a 52-card deck and no joker. Others play the game so that straights and flushes are considered high. However, the Lowball variation we will focus on is California Lowball Ace to Five. It is the most popular Draw action game west of the Rocky Mountains. It's a favorite of most Western professional Texas Hold'em Poker hustlers, mainly because the average Draw player is a perfect sucker because he suffers under the illusion that it's only a game of chance. That is, until he's taken to the cleaner's a number of times. It is then that he realizes that Lowball possesses a great amount of skill, countless angles, subterfuges and bluffs not found in regular Draw Texas Hold'em Poker.
All the standard Draw Poker rules of play
All the standard Draw Online Hold'em Poker rules of play apply to this variation of Lowball, with the exceptions that follow. Lowball Ace to Five is a five-card draw game with no minimum opening requirements, allowing a player to draw up to five cards. On the showdown, the lowest-ranking hand wins the pot. Flushes and straights count as low hands. Thus a hand reading 9-8-7-6-5 in Lowball is considered a nine high. The straight doesn't count. The same thing would apply if this hand were all of the same suit—it wouldn't be a straight flush, just a nine high. The ace ranks low, counting as 1. If all players pair and stay until the showdown, one pair of aces wins the pot, since this is lower than one pair of deuces or any other pair. The lowest hand is 5-4-3-2-ace, and is called a wheel, or bicycle.