HORSE poker is a poker game in which the players play five different forms of poker all in the same event. Since this game is made up of a bunch of different poker games the player who has the best general poker strategy will be successful. HORSE is an extremely hard game to perfect because by doing so you would have to learn all five different poker games and master them. Knowing a few basic HORSE poker tips will help you play the game better overall.

HORSE poker consists of five different games:

H is Limit Hold’em.
O is Omaha hi/low.
R is RAZZ poker.
S is Seven Card Stud
E is Seven Card Stud (eights or better).

These are some rather different games that can all be player relatively well as long as you know some HORSE poker tips.

Learning the Games of HORSE Poker

If you are going to play HORSE poker then you need to know something about all of the poker games. One thing that some poker players do wrong when trying to better their game is that they will just look over a little bit about each different game before they play poker. This is the wrong way to go about educating yourself. Just getting a little information about each game will only help a little for each section. When you are learning the games that make up HORSE you want to focus on one of the games at a time, and study that without moving on to the next too soon.

If you just have some general poker tips about each game you might do better, but you probably won't be outstanding. It would be better for you to just study Limit Hold’em and crush that part of the game rather than to do slightly better than you would walking in blind and just looking over a little bit of everything. The game in HORSE that you know the best should be your strongest area of the game.

Since most players will already have strategy at one of the forms of poker (usually what gets the player into HORSE) you should then try to learn about another section of it. You have your main game that you are already skilled in and then you learn more in depth about another one of the games. You then increase your skill in the game from being skilled in 20% of games to being skilled in 40% of the games. You cannot determine how well you are learning little bits about all the other poker games good enough to know when you have learned enough.

Tight Aggressive

In all of these poker games playing a tight aggressive style is beneficial. Playing tight is crucial in HORSE because you are not skilled in all of the games and therefore you do not possess the skill required to make hard decisions for most of them. By playing tight you are limiting the possibilities of misplaying a hand because you are only playing strong hands which make it easier to decide what to do. The easier the decisions are for you to make the better you will play. You are eliminating the spots that you are weak against your opponents and only competing in the games you don’t know as well with strong hands so you have a better chance.

Learn Your Opponents

When you are playing the different poker games pay close attention to how your opponents are playing the different games. If you notice that there’s a lot who are folding more during a certain game you can be sure that they are less confident in their play for this part of the game and will have more opportunities to steal from these players. Every extra pot you can take down will build your stack up and keep you above water.

Avoid being in hands against opponents when they seem very confident in the game. If you have noticed that their poker is more open for a specific game then let them dominate for that part of the game. There is no need to put yourself in a position that you have to play against a player that is stronger than you in a situation. There will be other opportunities to get into hands against them so take those and avoid playing against a player who has an edge on you.