The Razz chapter of the Full Tilt Poker Strategy Guide: Tournament Edition is presented in a unique way, with Michael Craig summarizing, narrating, and quoting a conversation between Ted Forrest and Huck Seed. Given my extensive involvement with competitive debate, it’s probably no surprise that I find this a very promising format. I only wish that Craig had played a more active moderating role in order to encourage the two pros to delve deeper into their differences and explore their competing perspectives. What we get instead is a series of hastily explained concepts that are usually thought-provoking, occasionally misleading, and sometimes even both.
One thing upon which both players agree is the importance of the exposed cards in determining how to play on 3rd street. Obviously I knew this was a factor to consider, but their conversation really hammered home what a huge consideration they could be, in extreme cases making a three-card seven either unplayable or a favorite over A-2-3. As Forrest puts it, “When the good players get aggressive, you can put them on duplicated cards in the hole. When a beginning player gets aggressive, it’s more likely he has A-2 in the hole.” Unfortunately, the chapter examines only extreme examples. It would be interesting to know how 4-5-7 rates against A-2-3 when there are two dead 4’s and a dead 7 instead of three 4’s, three 5’s, and three 7’s.
The pair consider other 3rd street decisions such as how to defend the bring-in and how to adjust to larger or smaller antes. To my surprise, they both contradicts Sklansky’s well-known advice to never open limp in Razz and suggest open limping for a variety of reasons: to trap an aggressive player, to cut down on variance, to set up a cheap steal on 4th street, or to see what the other low cards do before getting overly involved.
The question of courting variance by pushing edges on early streets versus playing cautiously and passing up favorable odds in order to maintain a stack proves a contentious one. Seed recalls some tournaments where he was able to steal his way to the final table with no big confrontations and argues that when the stealing is good, “I don’t want to gamble with a certain percentage of my stack.” He even claims he would pitch a live A-2-3 on 3rd with a raise and reraise in front of him simply to avoid playing a big pot, even as a substantial favorite.
Forrest clearly disagrees and insists that even good players need to gamble when they have big odds in their favor. Craig quotes a longish conversation on the subject, but it is disappointingly lacking in substance. Instead of delving into the details of how an edge might be won back later or what situations, if any, might be passed, the two ask each other loaded questions and repeat tired tournament cliches. Forrest gets in a good last word, though: “I think I could make money playing Huck’s discards.”
The entire passage proves misleading because they never mention that only an exceptional player like Seed should even consider passing on a profitable spot in any kind of tournament. There’s a very real danger that inexperienced readers may take Seed’s advice out of context and make some atrocious folds as a result.
Their discussion is much more productive on the subject of playing a short stack. Both ask and answer some good questions about how short is short and how one should play with stacks of various sizes.
Overall, however, there are a lot more questions than answers, in no small part because the two men never explore in-depth their disagreements with each other and with other authors on the subject. There’s insufficient discussion, for instance, of the survival versus accumulation debate and no mention of Sklanky’s well-known objection to open-limping, despite the affinity of both pros for the play. Given how well suited the dialectic format is for investigating differences of opinion, these are particularly glaring omissions
Also absent is almost any discussion of how to play after 3rd street, even how to handle such common situations as a strong starting hand that bricks on 4th, what to do when you appear to catch well but actually pair a hole card, what to do when both players brick 4th in a heads up pot, how to handle various draws on 5th and 6th streets, and how to play the river. It might be argued that this chapter is just a glimpse into an interesting conversation between two top pros and not intended as a comprehensive introduction to tournament razz. That would be fine if there were another chapter that covered the game in a more traditional way.
Still, this chapter does contain a lot of interesting material, and despite its shortcomings, it does provide a glimpse into how two different players approach a Razz tournament. Once again, Forrest gets in a resounding last word:
“[T]he average player in these razz tournaments is pretty weak. So playing by the book should be good enough to build up your chips. But when you match up against good readers, good razz players who have a little speed to their game, you will be at the mercy of getting good starting cards.
Razz in one of the purest forms of poker, because the good players will make the money and the bad players will lose the money. It’s a beautiful, beautiful form of poker.”