NoMercy OFC Crash Course: Observe Your Opponent’s Boards

Hello everyone! Welcome to “NoMercy OFC Crash Course”, my personal blog on OFC Pineapple (Open Face Chinese Poker). Week after week, I’ll go over the history of the game, some basic rules and recommendations, anecdotes from the players, and finally, some more advanced strategies.  Stay tuned and enjoy the Fantasy Ride!

Over the last weeks, we reviewed different openings and we went through some real-life hand analysis. There are multiple different possible scenarios in Open Face Chinese Poker, and we will continue to study what are the optimal plays according to each situation.

Take your time

This week, we will focus on a bit of general advice that we started to cover in tips #10 of these series. This is about “Taking your time”.

Indeed, I want to emphasize again how crucial it is to do so, and to observe carefully your opponent’s boards before placing your cards in a hurry. Remember that you have a large time back while playing OFC on CoinPoker, so why rush to place your cards as quickly as possible?

Let’s go over this scenario that presented itself to me recently. I received these 5 cards to start the hand:

Being last to act and seeing the cards that my opponents have revealed, this is a pretty standard opening for the Ace and the King. Indeed, the Ace will go in the middle for sure, and the King will go on top. As for 6-5-2, I decided to be a little creative and to start chasing down a flush on the bottom row with 6-2 of heart. This play may be debatable, but this will be the subject of another column. Right here right now, I saw that the sixes were almost dead, but that a lot of hearts were remaining in that deck, so I decided to go this way, knowing that I could still change my plan and make trips deuces on the back, or why not quads! I can always abandon my flush as well and settle down for two pairs on that line.

My next draw

On my next draw, I received the following cards. Observe the draw and decide where you would place these cards?

I don’t know what your answer is, but on my side, I decided to go this way:

Can you point out what is wrong here?

The answer is actually the subject of this column.

I played too fast, I did not take time to look at all the cards out there, and that resulted in a ridiculous placement with a dead Queen on top!

This Queen cannot even be justified by the fact that I could win that top line with Queen high, since I already got a King there that beat my opponent on the right side. As for my opponent on the left side, this card has no incidence at all, since he already made his pair of Queens on the top row.

If I had been more careful, I would have placed a live 10 on top, knowing that apart from the pair of Kings I am pursuing, the only other pair that will give me more points than 10s would be Jacks. And since there are still 3 Jacks live in the deck, I can always use them to make two pairs or trips on the back, should I abandon my flush draw.

What to do

The result of that “little” mistake was simply dramatic! Indeed, as the action unfolded, I successfully made my flush in the back:

However, look at this final draw, and remember where my 10 of clubs were supposed to be.

I know that everybody makes mistakes, but it’s really important to realize how every point is crucial in this game.

Here, we are not talking about a mere point or two, but a huge 10 points difference!!! Indeed, a pair of 10s on top is worth 5 points, so my final score would have been +17 instead of +7.

When playing OFC on CoinPoker, you will have a decent time bank allowed to play your hand, so my advice is to use it wisely and to double-check your board before clicking on your mouse.

Meet me at the OFC tables on CoinPoker to practice your skills and enjoy the action. Open yourself a CoinPoker account today. Welcome to Fantasyland!

Isabelle “No Mercy” Mercier

OFC “Progressive” World Champion