Poker fusion

What happens if you take two of the most popular varieties of the same venerable, time-tested and multi-generational game, and put them together? Someone may be indignant: they say, this cannot be done, since it smacks of encroachment on the foundations; however, one of the most famous and popular poker operators thought it was worth a try.

Basically, Pokerstars, as a structure that has done a lot for poker, has the right to embark on such experiments, since in its searches the room always, without any exceptions, relies on the suggestions of its users. So it was with double tables in split-hold'em, and with the ability to view the cards discarded by opponents in show time. And now, crossing Hold'em and Omaha, PokerStars primarily pursued the interests of their players.

The announcement of the new format came out quite a long time ago - almost at the time when PokerStars launched its Unfold. Naturally, the gaming community was seriously interested in the future hybrid and immediately began to put forward hypotheses of how it could be.

Everyone agreed that it would definitely be Omaha and Hold'em, mixed in a kind of Irish poker on the previous Full Tilt - there will be four cards on the deal, two of which should be folded on the flop. However, in reality, everything turned out to be the opposite: not Omaha, which becomes hold'em, but no-limit hold'em, which transforms into pot-limit Omaha.

The table is designed for six players, each of whom gets two cards, after which one round of betting takes place, which crowns the flop. This is where the innovation begins: the remaining players receive one more card and trade another round, then the turn, and then another card - to complete the Hold'em-Omaha transformation.

This has received the trendy name "fusion", that is, "mixing". At the stage of testing this format that lasted for a month and a half, the maximum entry fee started at 50 big blinds and went up to 80 BB, which allows us to assume this value as the maximum. Moreover, in other "star" formats, the largest buy-in was exactly that much.

Fusion limits start at 2/5 cents, and the game itself is likely to appear in the PokerStars client very soon. It is quite possible that while this article is being read, it will already be available to users of the "star" room, which does everything to make poker less predictable, and therefore more fun.