Finally, you must be at least 21 years old to play online poker in New Jersey. Like your location, you’ll have to prove this before you can make a deposit/withdrawal by submitting some form of official ID. As long as you meet these two conditions, you can play real-money cash games and tournaments in New Jersey. Short Deck Flush Jackpot. Big Hand Jackpot. With refined desktop and mobile experiences, you can always find a table whenever you.

Short Deck Hold’em, also known as Six Plus Hold’em, is similar to traditional Texas Hold’em. Players are dealt two hole cards and the hand proceeds with four betting rounds and five community cards (a three-card flop, turn and river) just like Hold’em. The main difference, as the name implies, is that Six Plus Hold’em is played with only the cards that are six or higher in value.

• Short Deck Hold’em (also known as 6+) is a poker variant very similar to Texas Hold’em, where everyone is dealt two cards and there are five community cards on the table. Like Texas Hold'em, players have to make the best hand to win.
• Speaking of Aces, they play the same role in short deck poker rules, just like in Texas Hold’em. You can either use it as the lowest value or the highest value. To give a simple example, the lowest possible straight you can have according to short deck poker rules is that of Ace, 6, 7, 8 and 9, where Ace pretty much works as a regular 5.
• Short Deck Hold'em has been a popular feature in the high stakes games in Macau for a few years now, but it was only since last week that the wider poker world appears to have caught the bug, after Phil Ivey won his first event in three years in a Short Deck event, followed by Jason Koon taking down over $3.5 million in a Super High Roller version of the same format, both live on stream.

All of the 2s, 3s, 4s, and 5s, are removed from the deck (hence the nickname six plus or Short Deck), so instead of playing poker with a 52-card deck, it is played with a 36-card deck. With the deuces through fives removed, the sixes are the lowest cards in the deck.

Despite its similarities to Texas Hold’em, there are some significant differences in the hand rankings, strategy and rules of the game.

Short Deck Hand Rankings

Perhaps the biggest difference between Six Plus Hold’em and Texas Hold’em (besides the number of cards in the deck) is the hand rankings. Because the total number of cards in the deck is reduced, the mathematical odds of being able to make certain poker hands changes. It is this change in odds that dictates the change in hand rankings.

While there can be some variance in hand ranking depending on where the game is spread, for the most part, there are two important hand ranking to note:

Three-of-a-kind Beats a Straight

One might think that removing the deuces through fives would make it harder to make Straights, but the card removal means that all of the cards left in the deck are closer in rank than in a 52-card deck, meaning Straights are actually easier to make.

Also, just like in traditional Hold’em, the ace can be used as high or low when making straights. In the case of Six Plus Hold’em, the ace still acts as the highest card and can makes the highest straight AKQJ10, but it also can be used in place of the five making the smallest straight A6789.

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A Flush Beats a Full House

Card removal makes it harder to hit a flush than in traditional Hold’em, as there are four less cards of each suit. As a result, flushes are moved up in the hand ranking above full houses.

You can see all of the hand rankings for Six Plus Hold’em side by side with those of regular Hold’em in the table below (ranked from the highest hand to the lowest).

Six Plus Hold’em (36-Card Deck)	Texas Hold’em (52-Card Deck)
Royal Flush	Royal Flush
Straight Flush	Straight Flush
Four-of-a-Kind	Four-of-a-Kind
Flush	Full House
Full House	Flush
Three-of-a-Kind	Straight
Straight	Three-of-a-Kind
Two Pair	Two Pair
One Pair	One Pair
High Card	High Card

Where to Play Six Plus Hold’em

With the recent boom in popularity of Six Plus Hold’em, there are now several places to play the game online.

iPoker Network

One of the more popular places that players gather to play Six Plus Hold’em is at Red Kings which is on the iPoker network and offers a large international player pool that provides the liquidity needed to ensure that more games go off at the times you want and at the stakes you want to play.

Americas Cardroom

Short Deck was recently added to the offshore US facing poker room, Americas Cardroom on the Winning Poker Network (WPN). Another room on the network that offers Six Plus Hold’em is Black Chip Poker.

Soon be Available on PokerStars

Last month, pokerfuse discovered that PokerStars may be planning on adding Six Plus Hold’em to his game offering. When that happens, the game is likely to be added to its dot-com player pool first (although PokerStars is known to test games out in segregated European markets such as Italy).

Adding a new game to all of the regulated markets that PokerStars operates in will likely require additional testing and cutting through plenty of red tape to get approval from gaming regulators in those markets.

Latest News on Short Deck Poker:

GGPoker to Award $7 Million in Promotions This January

Once again, GGPoker raises the amount it will award in monthly promotions.

GGPoker Giving Away $5 Million Via Promotions This October

This is the biggest promotional giveaway that GGPoker has run to date.

Fresh Off the Record-Shattering WSOP 2020, GGPoker Announces $6.5 Million GTD Good Game Series of Poker

The GGSOP “recreates the full WSOP experience” for low-stakes players with 54 low buy-in events starting Saturday.

GGPoker’s First Week of the WSOP Bracelet Series Generates $21 Million in Prize Money, Nine Bracelets Awarded

The first-ever Short Deck online bracelet event takes place today.

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GGPoker’s $5 Million WSOP Season Giveaway is the Biggest in the History of Online Poker

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GGPoker Raises the GGMasters Guarantee Again

After meeting its newly increased guarantee for the first time last week, GGPoker bumped up the guaranteed prize pool for GGMasters by another $100,000 to $500,000.

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Table of content:

What is Short Deck Poker?

Short deck poker is one of the variations of the traditional and popular poker game - Texas Hold’em. It is also known as six-plus Hold’em or 6+ Hold’em in some parts of the world. This pretty much follows the same rules of Texas Hold’em but has one major difference. Short deck uses just 36 cards instead of the whole deck of 52 cards, and this has a huge say in the odds, draws and strategies. Ever since poker short deck was introduced in Macau casinos for the cash-rich poker games, it has become a huge hit in the world of poker. You need not pack your bags to play as you can do the same on the online gaming platform of GetMega.

Here, we take you through the short deck poker rules, variations, hand rankings and strategies to help you get started with the game.

What are the Short Deck Poker Rules?

To start with, poker 6 only uses 36 cards, out of which the players are dealt the cards. It is done by removing all the 2s, 3s, 4s and 5s, which means the new deck is short of 16 cards. This means, you now have cards from 6 and above, till King, along with the Aces.

Speaking of Aces, they play the same role in short deck poker rules, just like in Texas Hold’em. You can either use it as the lowest value or the highest value. To give a simple example, the lowest possible straight you can have according to short deck poker rules is that of Ace, 6, 7, 8 and 9, where Ace pretty much works as a regular 5.

Coming to the gameplay, it is played the same way as Texas Hold’em with every player getting two Hole cards and then using the Community cards to make the best possible hand. A regular game of short deck has four streets – Pre-flop, Flop, Turn and River. Post this, the hands are made the usual way and the winning hand at the end takes home the riches.

Are there any other popular versions of the short deck poker?

Yes, there is one popular version of short deck that is used more than others. In this, the short deck rules change a little, as the River is dealt in a different manner. While the regular short deck poker follows the route of 3 cards in Flop, 1 in Turn and 1 in River, this version skips the part of River. Instead, the players get one more Hole card, making it a total of 3 Hole cards. Now the players need to make a hand of 5 by using the combination of 4 Community cards and 3 Hole cards.

If you have played Omaha poker, then this version of short deck poker must have rung a bell in your head. In Omaha, the players have 4 Hole cards and 3 Community cards to make a hand of 5.

Note that you can only use 2 Hole cards to make your hand of 5 in both these poker games.

How are the short deck poker hand rankings different from Texas Hold’em?

The players can choose the kind of hand rankings they want to follow in a short deck poker game. You can either play it the regular way or use the alternative method where the short deck poker rules for hand rankings change. Also, you can play the game in the no-limit format or the fixed-limit format, even though the preferable style for short deck is the former one.

Here are the regular hand rankings that need to be followed while playing the regular version of short deck poker, which is similar to Texas Hold’em.

Hand Ranking	Hand Name	Poker Hand
Lowest	High Card	Kx, 6x, 9x, 8x, Qx
One Pair	K◊, K◊, 5x, 8x, Qx
Two Pair	K◊, K◊, 6◊, 6◊, Qx
Three-of-a-kind	K◊, K◊, K◊, 6x, Qx
Straight	Ax, 6x, 7x, 8x, 9x
Flush	K◊, J◊, 10◊, 6x, 9x
Full House	K◊, K◊, K◊, 6◊, 6◊
Four-of-a-kind	K◊, K◊, K◊, K◊, 6x
Straight Flush	A◊, 6◊, 7◊, 8◊, 9◊
Highest	Royal Flush	10◊, J◊, Q◊, K◊, A◊

Here are the hand rankings that need to be followed while playing the alternate version of short deck poker.

Hand Ranking	Hand Name	Poker Hand
Lowest	High Card	Kx, 6x, 9x, 8x, Qx
One Pair	K◊, K◊, 5x, 8x, Qx
Two Pair	K◊, K◊, 6◊, 6◊, Qx
Straight	Ax, 6x, 7x, 8x, 9x
Three-of-a-kind	K◊, K◊, K◊, 6x, Qx
Full House	K◊, K◊, K◊, 6◊, 6◊
Flush	K◊, J◊, 10◊, 6x, 9x
Four-of-a-kind	K◊, K◊, K◊, K◊, 6x
Straight Flush	A◊, 6◊, 7◊, 8◊, 9◊
Highest	Royal Flush	10◊, J◊, Q◊, K◊, A◊

You can note the differences in the ranking system. A three-of-a-kind overpowers a straight, and a flush has more power than a full house.

Now, one can ask why there is a difference in rankings in this version of short deck. The answer is quite simple – because it has less number of cards and the change in the ranking system makes the game fairer. Since there are only 36 cards in short deck poker, the possibility of making a flush with just 9 suited cards is much less than making a full house. Therefore, it has more precedence over a full house. A lot of online games follow this set of short deck poker rules.

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Is there any short deck poker strategy that one needs to follow?

Now that you know all the short deck poker rules, it is time to apply them and win big money. So, what kind of strategies can you follow to win at this game?

To start with, you need to change the mindset that you use for regular Texas Hold’em games, as a good hand in that is an average hand here. It is mainly because of the ease with which good hands can be made in short deck poker, thanks to the removal of low value cards. For example, it is quite easy to make straights and full houses in this, thus making it a low-value hand while playing the alternate version of poker short deck, which is not the case in Texas Hold’em.

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The odds of getting certain draws too change because of the less number of cards in the total deck. Similarly, it affects the possibility of getting certain hands. The chances of getting pocket aces (a pair of Aces) are double than that of a regular Texas Hold’em game. Therefore, you must consider such odds while playing out your hands in the end.

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Furthermore, you need to think of a different game plan if you are playing the version of poker 6 that does not involve the use of River, and instead have a third Hole card. In such times, the need for having an excellent hand becomes much more apparent. This is the reason why you need to be well-versed with the short deck poker rules and the hand rankings, so that you can make a winning hand more often than not.

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Now that you know all the short deck poker rules and how the less number of cards can affect the ranking system of hands, you should be ready to give it a go. Download GetMega Poker App now and enjoy playing short deck poker and more to win big money.