NoMercy OFC Crash Course: Opening with a pair of Queens (Part 4)

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 series of tips, we reviewed different openings and we went through some real-life hand analysis. There are multiple different possible scenarios in OFC, and we will continue to study what are the optimal plays according to each situation. At the moment, we will be continuing our deep study about opening with Queens and all possible scenarios when receiving such a pair to start your hand.

After reviewing all possible best strategies, we will move on to opening with Kings, Aces, 3-Flush, 2 Pairs, Open-ended straight draw, and so on.

Openings in heads-up

For the simplicity of these series of tips about openings, we will assume that we are first to act in a Heads-Up play.

We ended the last post leaving a question in the air regarding the following initial five cards and I asked you to guess what the best opening in such a case would be:

What is your answer to this question?

If you understood the previous concepts correctly, you now know that the best play in such a case will be the following:

This is definitely the correct play, even if that means forsaking those two Fantasyland’s cards that you received to start your hand.

It’s important that you do not actually see this as “scarifying” the two Queens, but instead, you should see this as building a very strong back that will often converts into a Full House, coming along with 6 points royalties. Compare this easy access to 6 points, versus the difficult process of making a valid board to cover QQ on top for only 7 points royalties, and you will begin to understand why this is the best placement.

Remember that OFC is a mastermind complex game and there will ALWAYS be exceptions if you are second or last to act or depending on the format you are playing: Heads-up or three-handed. 

As explained before, in most OFC scenarios, there is not a clear black or white answer the right way to open with Queens and another pair will mostly depend on the 5^th card accompanying these two pairs.

What if the fifth card is an Ace or king?

For example, look at the following opening and try to guess what would be the optimal placement here?

Rendezvous next week to find the answer. Make sure you keep a lookout for the NoMercy OFC Crash Course!

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