NoMercy OFC Crash Course: Opening with a Full House (Part 5)

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. Today it’s opening with a Full House.  Stay tune and enjoy the Fantasy Ride!

As explained earlier we are now covering a crucial subject in OFC: your openings. Opening with a Full House.

Indeed, the way you will chose to place your initial 5 cards will be the foundation of your hand and it therefore represent one of the most important decision you will have to make in Open Face Chinese Poker.

We are studying all the best openings in order of the highest starting hands by ranking, until we reach the very worst opening hand with 5 rags such as 10-7-5-4-3 in 4 different suits.

Remember that one of the ultimate goals in Chinese Poker is to reach Fantasyland (FL), so starting with the most effective placement will greatly help you get there!

We already covered some of the best poker hands as we went over all possible scenarios and draws that concern a Royal Flush, a Straight Flush, and Quads.

Right now we are in the middle of studying the range of all possible openings with a Full House, and we started by covering the downsides of splitting a Full House.

We also started to go over the range of hands where it will be best to actually split your Full House. That is: when a Full House includes a pair of Aces, Kings or Queens, when a Full House includes a pair of Jacks or Tens and when your pair is smaller than the trips.

Let’s now move to Exception #4.

Exception #4

When your trips are between 555 and 888

This may sound as an innovative and awkward strategy, especially as we emphasized last week on the importance of your pair being smaller than your trips for positive scenarios to be able to materialize in splitting your Full House.

But here are some key points that justifies this play, even if your pair is higher than your trips:

Key Point # 1 – You will occasionally make a Full House in the middle

You will occasionally make a Full House in the middle even if you started the middle row with a pair higher than your trips.

In last post, we saw that it would be pointless to split a Full House such as 222 in the back and 10-10 in the middle, because you would very rarely make trips in the middle with such a low back row.

But if your back is 555, 666, 777, or 888, then you can still make a smaller boat in the middle by catching smaller trips.

One might say that can also happen with 444 in the back, but the chances are much less, and just like placing a 9 in the back and an 8 in the middle in openings, we need to draw the line somewhere.

That line is 555. Under that, you are losing your edge by splitting your Full House.

Indeed, with 222, 333 or 444, you will rarely improve your middle row without making quads in the back, which almost never happens, having only one live card in the deck.

Key Point # 2 – You will frequently win more points because of this split

This play may result in openings with hands such as 555 in the back and 99, 88, or 77 in the middle.

As we will see later, the 9 will generally go in the back when it’s the highest card of your initial draw, so two pairs 9 high in the middle will often make you win that row, which frequently has a direct impact on a scooping possibility.

You could argue that two pairs 8 high in the middle are the next best thing. Indeed, as we learned when we went over Exception #2, making two pairs Jacks or Tens in the middle will be a regular winner for that line.

As such, if no one has this kind of monster or a pair of 9s in the middle, then the next best hand will most likely be two pairs 8s.

Even two pairs 7s high will make you a winner on a regular basis for the middle row.

Warning!

The other way around does not work!

Never place trips in the middle that are smaller than a pair in the back. It’s a very important to know when opening with a Full House.

A hand such as 222 in the middle with J-J in the back in opening is a NO GO.

There are only 2 live cards in the deck to save you from fouling, aside from making a miracle boat in the back.

Be aware of the reasons why you make every single decision in OFC. That’s how you will become a winning player.

Rendezvous next week for the continuation of these series of tips on Open Face Chinese Poker!

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!

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Isabelle “No Mercy” Mercier

OFC “Progressive” World Champion