NoMercy OFC Crash Course: Switching to Open Face Chinese Poker

Hello everyone! Welcome to 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 tune and enjoy the Fantasy Ride!

As we saw last week, Chinese poker is still a relatively young game in evolution. It all started out as a game where we would receive 13 cards face down and had to position them all at once.

After a while of playing Chinese poker in its original closed format, the buzz slowly disappeared, until the arrival of its new formula “Open Face Chinese Poker”, which modernised the game and assured it a real future. Indeed, something was missing in the closed version, since you could never “bust out” unless you place your cards in a wrong order by mistake, just like you would misclick on your computer mouse.

In this new “open” version, each player would receive 5 cards to start the hand, and then would be dealt one card at the time until the board was complete. In these conditions, when the game was four handed, you actually had access to every single card of the deck, which means that calculating your outs became vital again, just like in NLH or PLO.

This new format is what brought me back to the Aviation Club de France poker tables in Paris a few years back, playing all night long, placing cards, counting outs, busting, winning big bonuses, and watching my stack making swings in every direction!

I remember one particular evening, it was a weeknight, around 2 or 3 in the morning, and our OFC game was going to break soon, as players were leaving the club.  We were still three players in action, but the third one left the game, leaving me alone with poker legend and good friend David Benyamine, whom I adore, obviously. But let’s not forget that he is an amazing player who dominates every game format that he plays!!!

Therefore, playing four handed with David is fine, as he takes a lot of risks and often busts out, but playing heads up against him… no way.  So, I told to him that I would quit the game too, but he was as addicted as me, and he insisted that I stay. To convince me, he said “We will play for zero”.  Wow! That means playing just for the fun of it!  It’s a very rare thing to do for high stakes players such as Benyamine, but I promise you, this game is THAT fascinating…  David gave me tons of advices during our “free” game, while repeating over and over “not to tell the others”…  LOL!  Thanks David, I had a blast!

Moving from close to open format was just another step for this game… Stay tune next week to see how the game continued to evolve over the years!

Meet me at the OFC tables on CoinPoker to practice your skills and enjoy the action. Welcome to Fantasyland!

Isabelle “No Mercy” Mercier

OFC “Progressive” World Champion