Same here, our group was nearly 100% No-Limit Hold'em players, with a couple of Omaha and older Stud players. Today, it's a wide variety of games, including more circus games than you can play in a single session...... and while Hold'em still gets requested and dealt, the players now embrace and enjoy all of the other poker variants.
So how did we get there? I took a systematic approach, using a structured tournament format that provided a relatively low fixed financial risk:
- Introduce 3-card flop games. Started out with three No-Limit Pineapple variations (regular, Crazy, and Lazy (Tahoe). Close enough to Hold'em to not scare off people, while introducing strategy points that required players to deal with the extra possibilities that having more than two hole cards creates.
- Introduce Fixed-Limit stakes poker, low-card games, and split-pot games. We started with HORSE, which also introduced Omaha and three Stud variations, later playing Omaha Hi/Lo, Razz, and Stud8 as stand-alone Fixed-Limit games along with Badugi. This phase helped players develop the concepts of drawing games and pot-odds beyond that of simple HLHE.
- Introduce Pot-Limit games. We started playing Hold'em, the Pineapple variants, and Omaha using a pot-limit structure, which introduced the big-bet component and further developed betting strategies associated with pot odds and drawing hands.
All this led to the creation of one of our more popular leagues, HORS -- rotating NLHE, PLO8, Razz, and Stud8 tournaments (3 each), with a freeroll Championship game that featured alternating orbits of all four games. The HORS final game format still remains popular.
Then we started introducing Fixed-Limit circus games, beginning with those that had close ties to games already played and familiar:
- SOHE, Big O, and SuperHold'em were all easy transitions. In today's world, I would also include 2-Hand Hold'em and 3-Hand Hold'em in this group of transition games.
- Once those games were accepted, we moved to playing them as pot-limit. By that time, players were comfortable enough with the games and with pot-limit play that the transition was relatively easy and not overly painful.
- Adding expanded pot-limit versions of those games was easy: Lazy Pineapple Hi/Lo, Ludicrous Pineapple, Double-board Omaha, Super-Hold'em Hi/Lo, 3-Hand Hold'em Hi/Lo, Inverse Omaha8, etc. met with little resistence.
We later added more complex games, such as Scrotum, Scrotum8, PLOcean8, Dramaha, Shodugi, Scarney, Razzaho, etc.to the mix.
Tournaments, fixed-limit cash, and micro-stakes cash games (played with either very low denomination cash-value chips or 1/10th to 1/20th of actual value chips) all work well as tools to introduce Hold'em players to other types of poker.
But imo, the real keys to success are to provide an environment where they cannot get financially destroyed, and to introduce new concepts and games at a pace at which they can be understood, absorbed, and embraced. Baptism by fire often results in players never returning or refusing to play in future games.
