Pineapple Open Face Chinese: The Rise

As I write this, I am watching the first ever Open Face Chinese (OFC) Poker World Championships Live from Prague, brought to you by Tonybetpoker.com. For me, this is an exciting time, where the validity of a game created no more than a few years ago is coming to fruition. I am predicting a decent-sized OFC boom in 2015, and am excited to see this game getting the mainstream attention it deserves.

Yes, there are concerns about the game being able to be solved by computers, but how is that different than chess or backgammon (and even poker). The bottom line is that it is fun and addicting, with tons of gamble, and it is an amazingly complex strategy game, where the highs are high, and the lows are low.

On that note, we have launched over at www.openfacesolutions.com and are offering free access to our tactics trainer and educational videos. We are also giving a 33 percent discount to your first month’s paid subscription if you use coupon code: Cardplayer9. But enough with the plugs, let’s study a few interesting spots that I ran into recently.

Here we have a decent runner-runner FantasyLand gamble. With two aces and one king live, we have a 31 percent chance of hitting the middle, but we have to remember that one is the ace of clubs, which we need to complete the back. This makes the calculation rather complicated, but we can mentally imagine that we are making both a pair in the middle and a flush less than 25 percent of the time. So, the question from there is: Is that enough? The answer is no, and it’s an error of 2.75 points, but I understand why people would make that gamble.

So what then is the right play? Should we put the A up front to beat our opponent? Or put the A in the middle to play it safe. Well, this answer is actually a little trickier than that.

The answers:

J Front, A Middle .796
A Middle, J Front .793

With the slightly worse answer being only .003 off, we can certainly consider either answer correct, but I find it absolutely fascinating that the simulator finds it slightly better to play it “super” safe. It’s accounting exactly for the cases where you get the A without a K 5 9 2 or , and weighing that against the value of hitting A X or A X. This is something a human could just never do, but luckily it doesn’t really matter here.

There are certainly a lot of ways you could play this hand. The first thing I am thinking is that we should complete the flush in the back. After that, the decision is whether or not to put the king up front, the queen up front, or the king in the middle. I think hitting the eight extra points for a flush in the middle is likely worth the chance of fouling, so I would go K front. What would you do?

The answers:

A Back K Front -6.56
A Back Q Front -6.78
A Back K Middle -11.37

So if you had thought you were playing it safe by putting the king in the middle, you would actually be making a massive error of almost five points! I see some players make a play like this claiming some sort of “low variance” strategy, but the truth is, you are just handing your opponent points. Remember to be objective in your decision making and not play it safe just to avoid an “I told you so” foul. Try not to let a few moments of hindsight cloud your judgment on which play is the best.

Here we have another FantasyLand decision between K Front 9 Middle and K Middle 9 Front. This is generally just a situation of counting outs, but here we have to weigh the opportunity of making a flush in the middle, and then the likelihood of still making FantasyLand after that. Remember, if we have six outs or more, we will hit over 50 percent of the time, which means our hand strength will increase on average. Here we have eight outs – 67 percent to hit – and it’s looking like a clear FantasyLand gamble.

The answers:

K Front 9 Middle 10.46
K Middle 9 Front 7.5

This debate is over. It’s clearly another gamble moment, where you just have to set aggressively and hope for the best. Anything else is just leaving money on the table.

Conclusions

So far I have only shown mid and late game heads-up Pineapple situations, but there is so much more to this game. Soon, we will start diving into earlier streets, then, from there, we will discuss FantasyLand hands, and vs. FantasyLand hands. Then we will have to dive into starting hands which is an entirely different beast, and often up to a lot of interpretation. After that we have 3-player strategy, and don’t even get me started about tournament strategy. With so much left unknown, we have only discovered the tip of the iceberg that we call Open Face, and I look forward to showing you the rest and learning with you as time goes on. ♠

Derric “SixPeppers” Haynie is the author of Quantum Poker and creator of Open Face Solutions.com and Open Face Strategy.com. Check out the sites for more articles, quizzes, solutions, tactics, news and information on Open-Face Chinese Poker.