I’ll defend boring old Texas hold’em. Most circus players won't make it to the end because they are ADHD kinky swingers but that is o.k.
I like mixed games and, like most, I grew up with dealer's choice games playing baseball, follow the queen, deuces or one-eyed jacks wild, etc. I can even enjoy some of the weirder stuff in the right crowd. I’m not saying everyone should just sit around playing 9-handed NLHE until the end of time. But the contention that hold’em is boring because you have to fold a lot, which is what I see touted often is, to me, exactly backwards.
That is part of what makes it poker.
Patience is not the absence of skill. Patience is a skill. Discipline is a skill. Knowing that KTo under the gun is pretty but still trashy is a skill. Watching three people light money on fire and still not joining the bonfire is a skill. Not needing to VPIP 80% just to feel like you are “playing” is a skill. Maybe I grew up in a different time or mindset but a lot of poker to me is the ability to wait, observe, read, and then attack when the spot is actually profitable.
Hold’em has a clean strategic beauty that circus games sorely lack. Two hole cards. Five board cards. Everyone understands the rules. That simplicity is not a weakness. It means the complexity in the game comes from position, range construction, bet sizing, blockers, table image, board texture, player tendencies, stack depth, pressure, and timing. It is simple to explain and hard to master. That's a sign of a great game, not a boring one.
Circus games can be fun, but a lot of the “fun” comes from forced action, confusion, massive equities, and people not really knowing where they stand. Yes that can create unavoidable table explosions and hilarious stories, but it does not necessarily make the game better. It just means there are more ways to gamble and fewer ways to know whether you actually even played well. Just because you won a pot doesn't mean you played it right or that you utilized any skill. I also like to gamble, and to me that is what the majority of Circus is, just gambling, not the utilization of a ton of skill. Not saying you don't have to pay attention and cannot discern information in those games that can give you an edge, but I would say the end result of any hand is much much more a crapshoot than anything else.
Hold-em is proud to be cheese pizza. A great cheese pizza is great because there is nowhere to hide. No pineapple, brisket, weird dough, hot honey, stuffed crust, or twelve toppings covering up the fundamentals. Dough, sauce, cheese, heat. If it is good, it is good because the basics are good. Hold’em is the same way. Starting hands, position, pressure, reading people, controlled aggression, and patience. No wild cards or draws needed.
And the “I don’t want to sit there folding” complaint has always sounded to me like saying baseball is boring because the batter doesn’t swing at every pitch. Exactly. That’s the point. The call is sometimes the play. The fold is sometimes the play. The best players are not the ones involved in every hand; they are the ones making better decisions hand after hand, including the hands they don’t play. I have heard many times that the truly skilled players are not the ones that know when to play a hand, but are the ones that know or sense when to get away from a hand that 9/10 people would have played. In other words, the smart folders.
So I will play circus games. I will gamble and have fun. We can invent “double-board reverse bisexual scrotum pineapple drawmaha” if the table wants it. I’ll laugh and maybe even sit in. But I reject the idea that hold’em is lesser poker because it rewards discipline. The fact that it punishes boredom, impatience, and “I came here to play every hand” energy is one of the reasons it is the undisputed King of Poker Games.
Once the night fizzles out, if the remaining players want to take out NLHE we do. Near the end everyone is looking for maximum carnage.
