I Hate Texas Hold 'em

This poker variant has somehow risen from obscurity to fame, and in the process has pretty much become synonymous with poker. It seems that the worst variants of a card game tend to rise to the top, for reasons that would probably make a good topic for a psychological study. For instance, you know solitaire? What you're thinking of is actually a specific solitaire game generally called Klondike. It sucks, because it is based more on luck than skill, with a significant percentage of games dealt being impossible to win no matter how good you are. Imagine if one out of every three times you loaded up a skirmish in Starcraft, the computer strolled over to your base 5 seconds into the game with a dozen carriers. That is Klondike.

Texas Hold 'em is similarly terrible. For argument's sake, let's compare Texas Hold 'em to the once popular, now quaint five-card draw (I'm going to assume you know the rules. If not, just fucking google them). In Texas Hold 'em, you know 7 of the (8 + 2 * #ofplayers) cards in play. In 5-card draw, all you know is 5 out of the (5 * #ofplayers + #cardsdiscarded) cards in play. Basically, even if nobody discards any cards, you still know less about the cards in play in five card draw (for 2 players, 5/10 versus 7/12. and the disparity only gets greater from there). More importantly, you know a great deal less about what possible hands your opponent has (5/7 cards for hold 'em, 0/5 for five-card). The result: Texas Hold 'em is much easier to "game" by knowing statistics, while 5-card forces you to think a bit more about what your opponents are doing.

Essentially, hold 'em sucks because it removes a great deal of the chance and psychology from the game, replacing it with simple rules like "stand on pocket faces or 4/7". A great deal of the fun in poker comes from learning to read the people you play with regularly- learning their little tics or knowing that they tend to bluff when they're down on chips. Similarly, you have to weigh the huge unknowns when making your choices. If you get dealt 4 hearts, do you check, then discard that pesky spade in hopes of making it big (but broadcasting to your opponents that you didn't have squat before the discard), bluff like a madman in hopes that nobody else got anything good to start with, or fold since you've got shit and only a 25% chance of having a decent hand? All these things, of course, do exist in hold 'em, but in a muted, boring sort of way. Oh look, he's betting big, he must have pocket face cards. Oh look, now ace-2-3 went down on the flop, but he's still betting big. Either he's a goddamn idiot, or he's bluffing.

Now, these shortcomings wouldn't matter too much normally. Let the stats geeks who can't keep a straight face play hold 'em, while people who are more passionate about poker play better variants. Live and let live, right?

Except nobody plays anything except texas hold 'em. Ever. At this point, I don't even think most people know that there are other kinds of poker out there, they just watch sunglass-clad people on ESPN2 play hold 'em at the "World Series of Poker" (on another note, can we please stop stealing sports terms for non-sporting events? I thought there were people who got paid to be creative about this shit...), and assume that that's all there is to the game. Texas Hold 'em has wrapped its insidious tendrils around poker as a whole, and squeezed all the fun out of the game. And most people don't even know what they're missing out on.

To continue my Starcraft analogy (because it's a particularly good one), Texas Hold 'em is like a map with bases on opposing sides, and there is only fog of war on a strip through the center third of the map. Sure, you don't know exactly when your opponent will strike, or from where, but you can get a pretty good idea, and so can he. Start zerg rushing? Your opponent can see it coming and will be able to counter you easily. Obviously, most people wouldn't want to play such a map, because it eliminates most of the fun and challenge inherent in fighting an unknown opponent.

And yet you idiots keep insisting on Texas Hold 'em whenever you play poker.