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OmaJack - What's Your Problem With It? (3 Viewers)

FordPickup92 said:
Personal preference I think. Alot of it is timing
People always call it when we've gone through orbit after orbit of mixed games and everyone's drunk or brain dead and they're like do this it's fun. And then it's not
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Let me stack you like Legos. It will be fun!
 
FestiveKnight said:
Can someone explain, using some modicum of math/statistics, the difference between this and having :ah::8h: on a board of :6h::7d::9h::js: in HE? Am I gonna get the nut flush? Am I gonna get the second nut straight? Will a blank come and I have only A high?
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You're exactly right. It's the same sort of uncertainty scale. You are gambling on an outcome that may or may not roll out in your favor, measurably so.

In Omajack, it's just split up into two buckets whose outcomes are measured differently. One of them seems shitty to some poker players because it's a scoring system from a different game, and sometimes the result is that your hand is just bust. It maybe feels a little involuntary or weird.

I don't feel that way, obviously. Just trying to do justice to the argument.

Consider this:

Omajack = Omaha + High Blackjack (< 22 qualifier)
Scarney = Hold'em + Heaven and Hell + Low Blackjack (no qualifier or > 0 qualifier depending on variant)

As a game mechanic, it's adjacent to the points half of Scarney.
 
JMC9389 said:
Perhaps, but let's say I get dealt AAKKx and I flop quads on 2 of the 3 boards. I pot it all the way and all it takes is for a 2 to come up on those two boards on the river, and I get nothing. Rare, I'm sure. But I do agree with the main premise that it's similar to God's Game. You need something going on both boards or 2 of the 3 boards to continue after the flops.

At least with most of the other games like Drawmaha, Scarney, etc, I know where I stand most times and know I have half the pot locked up.
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That's where dierailment or ultimate hi/lo derailment come in. And people hate on shuffle derailment but that extra nuance of knowing what card might possibly come on the turn/river makes it more interesting IMO. It's all about understanding the equities and variance.

I just think it's funny that everyone is always shouting "Holdem is so boring and can GFY" while simultaneously pooh-poohing games with more variance like OmaJack and derailment.
 
RocAFella1 said:
Explain please?
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The two mechanics of Shuffle Derailment that are significant departures from vanilla Derailment are:
  • Players get to see some of the cards that will later become part of a shared board. Ordinarily exposed cards mean a dealing irregularity or even a misdeal. It's strange for this to be a feature.
  • Discarded cards must be reshuffled to proceed with the hand. This is a necessary feature of some triple-draw games, but in poker in general, dead cards stay dead whenever possible.
Having to handle dealing irregularities and reshuffles from time to time isn't the end of the world, but a game built on the premise of ensuring they happen every hand without fail seems like a bad idea.

Also worth noting this confluence of rules grants skilled players with strong memories way too much of an edge. Your average rec player will get eaten alive.
 
Jimulacrum said:
The two mechanics of Shuffle Derailment that are significant departures from vanilla Derailment are:
  • Players get to see some of the cards that will later become part of a shared board. Ordinarily exposed cards mean a dealing irregularity or even a misdeal. It's strange for this to be a feature.
  • Discarded cards must be reshuffled to proceed with the hand. This is a necessary feature of some triple-draw games, but in poker in general, dead cards stay dead whenever possible.
Having to handle dealing irregularities and reshuffles from time to time isn't the end of the world, but a game built on the premise of ensuring they happen every hand without fail seems like a bad idea.

Also worth noting this confluence of rules grants skilled players with strong memories way too much of an edge. Your average rec player will get eaten alive.
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It’s this, and as simple as players building the board.

In this, player tendencies matter more than any other game/construct/mechanism. Players newer to the game at an extreme disadvantage compared to those not, more so than any other game/construct/mechanism.

Players building the board.

In this, it invites collusion, more than any other game/construct/mechanism.

Add in ethically questionable players, and it goes from bad to worse.
 
Jimulacrum said:
The two mechanics of Shuffle Derailment that are significant departures from vanilla Derailment are:
  • Players get to see some of the cards that will later become part of a shared board. Ordinarily exposed cards mean a dealing irregularity or even a misdeal. It's strange for this to be a feature.
  • Discarded cards must be reshuffled to proceed with the hand. This is a necessary feature of some triple-draw games, but in poker in general, dead cards stay dead whenever possible.
Having to handle dealing irregularities and reshuffles from time to time isn't the end of the world, but a game built on the premise of ensuring they happen every hand without fail seems like a bad idea.

Also worth noting this confluence of rules grants skilled players with strong memories way too much of an edge. Your average rec player will get eaten alive.
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I can understand the sentiment of the last line but the cards are not exposed IMO. I understand this operates in a fashion mostly dissimilar to a triple draw type game but the extra information of the number of cards to be shuffled add an element of information that makes the game intriguing to some.

Of course there are many hands that become very powerful such as having trips dealt at the start which all but guarantee a set or better to come out on of the the boards. However there is a little of nuance and meta game that goes into playing it as well as initially everyone dumps low cards, while holding high cards but that shifts as people realize that more low cards are being dumped.

I can certainly see how the irregularities of having "exposed" and "dead" cards may be unfamiliar to most, but I make the argument that it is still a game of imperfect information with equities and variance coming into play.
 
RocAFella1 said:
I can understand the sentiment of the last line but the cards are not exposed IMO.
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They're exposed in the same sense they'd be exposed if, say, the dealer were to fumble and flash a card near the middle of where the board cards are in the stub. Only if one player sees it, it's still an exposed card.

RocAFella1 said:
I understand this operates in a fashion mostly dissimilar to a triple draw type game but the extra information of the number of cards to be shuffled add an element of information that makes the game intriguing to some.

Of course there are many hands that become very powerful such as having trips dealt at the start which all but guarantee a set or better to come out on of the the boards. However there is a little of nuance and meta game that goes into playing it as well as initially everyone dumps low cards, while holding high cards but that shifts as people realize that more low cards are being dumped.

I can certainly see how the irregularities of having "exposed" and "dead" cards may be unfamiliar to most, but I make the argument that it is still a game of imperfect information with equities and variance coming into play.
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I don't doubt it makes for a strategically rich hand of poker. My main objection is to the mechanics of the game vis à vis typical card handling rules and procedures. It adds potential for mess and WAY too much advantage for players with skills that shouldn't be relevant in poker (e.g., tracking his own discards through the shuffle).

I don't think the strategic richness of the game justifies the potential mess.
 
Jimulacrum said:
They're exposed in the same sense they'd be exposed if, say, the dealer were to fumble and flash a card near the middle of where the board cards are in the stub. Only if one player sees it, it's still an exposed card.
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How is this any different than a triple draw game where the stub is no longer fresh and consists of previous round(s) discards?
Same advantage would apply if someone has skills to track discards for the aforementioned triple draw game then as well? Or potentially even tracking someone else’s folds in a stud game? Albeit that can be a memorization advantage.

Also, I’m not saying it isn’t possible but with one sometimes two boards going away depending on the variation it would be rather hard to track/manipulate IMO.

I see what you’re saying as far as the potential for card cheating/manipulation but maybe the game choice isn’t as big of a deal at that point compared to the player/venue choice.
 
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Jimulacrum said:
They're exposed in the same sense they'd be exposed if, say, the dealer were to fumble and flash a card near the middle of where the board cards are in the stub. Only if one player sees it, it's still an exposed card.
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Yes but everyone is “exposed” to 2-3 unique cards that no one else is exposed to. In the above scenario one player has extra information of that flashed card. I don’t see the two scenarios as being akin to each other.
 
Can you play no-bust, where it's closest to 21, and over/under ties go to the under? That way someone isn't automatically fucked by already having over 21 with 3 cards?
 
RocAFella1 said:
Yes but everyone is “exposed” to 2-3 unique cards that no one else is exposed to. In the above scenario one player has extra information of that flashed card. I don’t see the two scenarios as being akin to each other.
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Sure, I mean, we can pick it apart. It's not going to be like any exact example I can give because it's a unique game.

It just doesn't sit right with me as someone who plays and hosts mixed games, for the same reason it doesn't sit right with me when someone wants to deal out the whole board face-down in advance for a hand of Scarney. It's not always a mess but is a mess waiting to happen. If I'm the guy running the game, I don't want to have to answer for a game that's dealt like this.

It invites dishonest players to do unethical things that could easily fly under the radar—things that might not ordinarily be as big of a deal, such as seeing an opponent's hole cards and not speaking up. Let's not pretend people don't do this. If they do it in Shuffle Derailment, that information is much more dangerous to the integrity of the game than merely peeping one opponent's hole cards, and you'll never really know. It makes collusion (including simply letting your cards be seen by someone; good luck detecting that) more of a disaster too.

Just about everyone who's ever been cheated thought he didn't have to worry about it from the exact guy who cheated him. The truth is that it's best to just not play games with features like this. Accidental messes are a mess. Angle-shooting and cheating messes are even worse. There are so many other games to play that are just as strategically rich without the risk.
 
Jimulacrum said:
someone wants to deal out the whole board face-down in advance for a hand of Scarney.
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I agree with this wholeheartedly but as I said in my above post:
RocAFella1 said:
I see what you’re saying as far as the potential for card cheating/manipulation but maybe the game choice isn’t as big of a deal at that point compared to the player/venue choice.
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If you have dishonest players it doesn’t matter what game you’re playing or what safeguards you might put into place.
 
RocAFella1 said:
I agree with this wholeheartedly but as I said in my above post:

If you have dishonest players it doesn’t matter what game you’re playing or what safeguards you might put into place.
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I agree that the presence of dishonest players is the greater problem.

However, it's better in general to avoid rules and mechanics that make it easy to gain unfair advantage, especially in ways that are passive (observing cards one shouldn't) and rely on the person to proactively disrupt the hand to maintain the honor system.

In this case, even the "fair" (i.e., available to all ethical players) advantage you can gain by simply remembering your discards can be pretty disproportionate. Like there's a case to be made for adjusting your sense of value if someone you know to be, say, a great 7 Card Stud player is in there jamming when it doesn't make sense because you have all the good hands blocked. Maybe he knows something you don't about the upcoming cards.

I think it's an interesting strategic angle for sure. It's also something casual players will almost never leverage well, but skilled players will build half their strategy around exploiting effectively.
 
IMG_6120.webp

Shuffle derailment takes sooo much time.
 
While I laugh at the "pineapple" versions of Omajack, that extra decision point would be a significant point to leverage a player's skill. There are clearly better and worse choices to be made - including folding even with the best five of six cards.

The rich will get richer while the rest are having more fun. Perfect! -=- DrStrange
 

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