NoMercy OFC Crash Course: Opening with a Full House (Part 6)

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.

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. We are now at the conclusion of studying the range of all possible openings with a Full House, and we went over the complete range of hands where it will be best to actually split your Full House:

• When a Full House includes a pair of Aces, Kings or Queens
• When a Full House includes a pair of Jacks or Tens
• When your pair is smaller than the trips
• When your trips are between 555 and 888

Tricks and reminders

Bottom line; there are upsides and downsides of splitting your full house, as we saw in the very first post of this chapter.

But remember that if your hand fits within the following categories, the upsides outweigh the downsides of splitting your Full House:

Memorize these three big categories to know when to split your Full House:

• If your pair is AA, KK, QQ, JJ or 10-10
• If your trips are higher than the pair
• If your trips are 555 and higher

If any of these conditions apply, then you should split your Full House. You will quickly realise that it does happen most of the times.

You thought a Full House was a huge starting hand, but as it turns out, you will end up breaking most of your boats in opening.

If you look at things the other way around, you will indeed realise that there are not many hands left where you will secure your boat in the back in opening.

Here’s a different trick that you might find easier to remember. This time, the trick is the other way around in order to know when to keep your Full House together:

The trips are 444, 333, 222

+

The pair is bigger than the trips

+

The pair is smaller than 9s

If all three conditions apply, then you keep your Full House together in the back on the initial draw, and you hope to find suited connectors on the next draw in order to make big bonuses in the middle.

It is especially important here to remember that all these advices are for a situation where you are first to act in a heads up format.

This is especially important for delicate decisions such as this one.

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