Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-Badugi!

I got an email a few weeks ago from someone at Pokercs.com reminding me I had some money in an account there. I had no recollection of ever signing up at PokerCS, and it turns out my recollection was correct. It was called Poker.com when I signed up. I don't know if they lost the URL in a custody battle or what, but that address now takes you somewhere else, so it makes sense they changed the name. And they're asking new players to go to Carbon Poker. I don't know what's up with that.

Anyway, turns out I did have some money left there. So I've played a bit of shallow end 6-max NLHE a few times in the last couple weeks. I was playing Sunday afternoon and getting bored because the action was rather slow and I was getting dealt nothing but junk. Checking out the tournaments I saw a freeroll coming up soon so I signed up. I initially read the listing as "PL Badgui" and thought, "Yeah, that pretty much describes their interface -- bad GUI."

Then I noticed it actually said B-a-d-u-g-i. Bah-doo-gie? What the hell is a badugi? Sounds like some kind of Italian sports car. Or maybe some mystery meat dish you'd buy off a cart on a Bangkok street corner.

Thankfully, I had a few minutes before the tournament started so I did some Googling and at least was able to read the rules. Interesting game. In case you're as unfamiliar as I was, here's a quick rundown.

You get dealt four cards. It's triple-draw, with you being able to exchange up to four cards at each draw. Betting rounds after the deal and after each draw. The idea is to make the best low hand, aces playing low, but you have to essentially discard paired cards and cards of the same suit. If you have A355, you'd throw away one of the fives and play a three-card hand. If any of the remaining cards were of the same suit you'd discard the highest of them and play a two-card hand, or a one-card hand if they were all the same suit. (You don't actually discard them, they just don't count toward your hand.) A four-card hand beats a three-card hand which beats a two-card hand which beats a one-card hand. If players have the same number of cards in play, then the values are compared like in lowball.

It sounds weird, but it's kind of an interesting game. And like with many of the other non-holdem games, there are a lot of people who seem to not have the vaguest clue of what they're doing.

For instance, there was a guy at my first table in this tournament who quickly figured out almost everybody was actually sitting out (though, of course, the software didn't actually indicate that, and even delayed at each player before folding them) and he could take the blinds if he raised. It took me a bit longer to catch on to the sitting out part, and even longer still to get some cards I was willing to take against even a random hand. But I finally started playing back. And this guy would come back at me with crap, drawing two when I was already pat with a four-card seven.

It wasn't too long before I had all his chips and it was me putting in the raise every hand to steal the blinds from the players who didn't show up.

Sadly, but not too sadly, since it was incredibly boring, I got moved from this table to one where there were three live players and three stiffs. The other two players at this table seemed a bit loose to me, but not really terrible. Not like I would claim to be a qualified judge of this, having had all of 15 minutes experience with this game, but it seems a bad play to me to call for half your stack and then draw two. But that's just me.

Things went back and forth a bit. Another live player got moved to our table and I took his chips, giving me a big lead over the other guys. Then some guy with a stack twice as big as mine sat down. Nothing like just starting to enjoy the feeling of being king of the hill and then be quickly put back in your place.

I did okay for a while, steadily increasing my stack. Then I made a dumb play. One of the other original live players from this table had shown a propensity for making big bets with rather marginal hands, often not even a four-card hand. So when I called his all-in with a three-card five and one draw left I figured there was a good chance I was ahead and probably had a fair number of outs if I wasn't. He had a four-card jack and I missed my draw.

I went all-in the next hand with my few remaining chips and busted out around 200th of 1500. I'm sure I could have finished much higher if I hadn't made that one mistake.

If you see Badugi listed anywhere, you might want to give it a try. At the very least I can say it was fun.