Razz - What Makes it Unique
As with every other poker variation, razz has its share of quirks and idiosyncrasies. But there is one feature of razz that sets it apart from all other forms of poker, and that is: it is the only poker game where a player frequently finds himself in a spot where he knows, with 100% certainty, that he currently has the best hand. Step back and think on that for a minute. In Hold'em you virtually never ‘know’ that your hand is best; you may think your hand is good, in fact you may be 95% sure that it’s good, but unless you have the absolute nuts you can never know for sure. The same holds for seven stud, and (to a lesser extent) Omaha and Omaha 8. But in razz this happens all the time.
Consider the following layout. You are dealt the (4s 6s) 7h and open the pot for a raise. A player with a nine calls you, and everyone else folds. On fourth street you catch an 8, and your opponent catches a 3. At this point you can say with 100% confidence that your hand is best, since the best hand your opponent can hold is a nine, while you currently have an eight. No amount of betting or raising on your opponents behalf can dissuade you from raising him back. There’s nothing he can do; your hand is good, you know that it’s good, and you’re going to make him pay through the nose if we wants to play on.
Hands like this come up frequently at razz, and the players who either choose to willfully ignore this dynamic, or who still don’t quite understand what it means to the play of the hand, are destined to lose everything they have in front of them. Although there is some hand reading that goes into razz, particularly on the later streets, razz is essentially a game where your hand is defined by your board cards. You can’t ‘bluff your way to victory’ nearly as often in this game as you can in other games, because your opponents just aren’t going to be fooled. You either have the goods or you don’t.
As you might expect this one simple fact has enormous strategic implications, and we will touch upon these in the upcoming articles in this series. For now, however, the important thing for you to understand is that razz is not a game that features a lot of deception or fancy play. It’s a game where you leverage small- but obvious-advantages over and over. And at the end of the day, provided that your opponents play poorly, you are all but guaranteed to walk away a winner.
Be the first to comment on this
If you are a Gambling.com member, please login at the top left of this page.
If you are not a Gambling.com member, please complete our sign up form—membership is free and it takes just a minute or two to sign up.
Bookmark this page: (What are these?)