Recap of Monday's SCOOP action

After Sunday's sweetness, Monday was pretty boring. I started the day off winning a $22 with rebuys satellite to a $425 tournament. That was a net profit of $323. Not bad.

Originally I'd planned to skip the $215 Triple Draw Lowball, but after my big win I have plans to play a $4,000+ tournament later in the series that is a mix of 8 games (The HORSE games, plus pot limit Omaha, no limit hold 'em, and limit 2-7 Triple Draw Lowball). Triple Draw is the first game in the mix and I needed the practice.

The way Triple Draw works for those of you who don't know about it is there are six players who each get dealt 5 cards. The goal is to make the worst hand possible. Aces are the highest card not the lowest, and unlike other games where a low hand comes into play in this version straights and flushes count against you. So the best possible hand is 2 3 4 5 7 with at least two suits represented which is why the game is called "Deuce to Seven" lowball (in contrast to "Ace to Five").

There are blinds just like in hold'em and after a round of betting whoever is left gets to throw away bad cards from their hand and get them replaced with new ones. Unlike in 5 card draw where you only do this once, in Triple Draw you get a chance to draw new cards three times with a round of betting after each draw.

I used to play regular lowball at the Oaks clubs years ago (in that variant there is only one draw, aces are low, and straights and flushes are irrelevant so A 2 3 4 5 is the best hand), and there are some similarities. I've also played the 8 games mix at my normal stakes so I have some experience there, but it was good to work out some of the holes in my game yesterday.

I made it through about 3/4 of the field in both the low stakes and medium stakes events before coming up short of the money (-$22 in the low and -$215 in the medium). In total that was 7 or 8 hours of play and I'm feeling my better about lowball skills.

The other set of tournaments was heads up matches. In the low I won three matches which was good enough to make the money (+$14). In fact it took me a TOTAL of three hands to win the first two matches! The third match took about 10 hands, and the fourth took about 50, but I came up short. In the medium stakes, in massive contrast, my first match took over 150 hands, I got it in with a strong draw and lost to top pair (-$162).