Spice Up Your Home Game: The Badugi Dramahas

Occasionally a player will walk up to a mixed game table, check out the games being played, and then instantly leave after seeing an abundance of Dramaha plaques.

Losing potential players due to feeling overwhelmed is an issue in casino and home games alike, and if this possibly applies to you, rest assured it’s not a hard form of poker to learn. And once you get a handle on one you can essentially play them all.

Dramaha is a split-pot game where the best Five-Card Omaha hand chops with the highest-ranking Draw hand. It follows the same structure as Omaha with one key exception; after the flop betting round, all players have a single opportunity to refresh as many cards as they wish in an attempt to improve both their Draw and Omaha hands.

The only difference between the many variations of Dramaha is what wins the Draw side. In a previous issue, Dramaha High and Deuce-to-Seven Dramaha were discussed where the goal is to make the best pure high hand or best low respectively. In this installment, we’ll introduce variants where the winner of the Draw side is determined by a superior Badugi.

In Dramadugi (sometimes referred to as Dramaha Low-Dugi) the goal is to obtain the absolute lowest badugi. Aces are low, so the nuts are A-2-3-4 rainbow. If no one acquires a badugi, then the top three card holding wins the Draw side.

When everyone is dealt five cards, the odds of being dealt a pat badugi is roughly one in five, with the complete distribution as follows:

When compared with four-card Badugi, the odds of making a badugi when drawing two are essentially doubled, making it much easier to outdraw a relatively strong pat badugi. For example, (A 2 3) J K will make a badugi around 40% of the time, and has around a 25% chance of overtaking 5 7 8 9 X.

All of this impacts strategy as you may want to break a weak dealt badugi, or simply not play the holding to begin with. Sometimes you may be faced with an interesting discard decision, and ultimately decide to draw one in order to significantly increase your Omaha prospects at the expense of reducing your odds of making a badugi. For example, we would often be enticed to draw one to (A 2 3 J) K when the flop gives us trip jacks.

Four different suits are also required in Dramaha High-Dugi, however, in this game quads, trips, two pair, and high pairs are desired. The best possible holding for the badugi half is A A A A, not an A-K-Q-J badugi as some might surmise.

When dealt K K 10 8 3 your current draw holding is a pair of kings badugi. If you end up discarding the 3 there are only four improving cards to your Draw (i.e. high-dugi) holding. The two remaining kings would give you a trips badugi (e.g. K K K 10 or K K K 8), while either the 10 or 8 would make a two pair badugi (i.e. K K 10 10 or K K 8 8).

Although your odds of improving aren’t that great, the good news is that a pair of kings badugi is usually sufficient to win the Draw side. However, it’s a much different story with a pair of eights badugi as that is more often behind heading into the draw, in which case you are often in bad shape on both sides of the pot.

A pair of aces with three suits (e.g. A A Q 5 2) is a strong starting hand, and should be played aggressively in an attempt to get the pot heads-up. Against one opponent it would tend to have the advantage in Omaha, and is around 50% to collect a badugi making spade.

The Minnesota mixed game crew also plays Dramaha Dugi 2.0 where the final pot is split three ways between: 1) Omaha High 2) Low Dugi and 3) High Dugi. It’s possible to scoop, but one needs a bit of luck to do so. Making a hand such as A A 7 8 2 makes winning the entire pot a decent possibility, but sometimes just having any badugi (e.g. A 7 Q 2 10) would be sufficient to win both Draw sides.

They also invented Dramaha Red/Black where the object is to obtain five cards of a single color. While it’s not technically a Badugi game, it is based upon suits, and the highest-ranking poker hand would prevail amongst all those able to show down a single color. In order this would be flushes, straights, two pair (trips would contain three suits), big pair, and then high cards.

If no one has a five-card hand, then the best four-card holding would win, however, most of the time a five-card hand is probably required. There’s around a 5% probability of being dealt a made hand, and when starting with four of a particular color, it’s close to a 50/50 proposition of making it on the draw.

Overall, I would score Dramadugi/Dramaha Low-Dugi as an 8 out of 10 poker game. It is easy to explain, produces a decent amount of action, and most players generally approve of having it in the mix. Its only real (minor) flaw is that it’s somewhat difficult to make a strong Omaha hand when concurrently aiming for four low unsuited cards within your Draw holding.

In contrast, Dramaha High-Dugi has many detractors and new players often have difficulty grasping what wins in Draw and end up making costly mistakes, so I’d rate it a 3 out of 10. Also, there isn’t as much action since many players are appropriately fearful of running into a superior Draw hand where the odds of running it down are quite slim. And when dealt a trips badugi it’s frustratingly hard to scoop; with 7 7 7 3 2 what exactly are we hoping to make in Omaha?

My own personal experience in Dramaha Dugi 2.0 and Dramaha Red/Black is limited, thus my ratings would mostly be an educated guess. Minnesota Chris Jester indicated that both games have big fans, while others could do without them. Dugi 2.0 could be interesting and promote multi-way action, but frequently chopping pots three-ways is not ideal.

Red/Black could prove to be entertaining since trying to make a single color is something you never try to do in any other game, and might also entail some though provoking discard decisions.

For example, would we ever consider breaking a dealt single color? I think the answer is yes, especially if it enables you to possibly make a flush. Single-color hands should be relatively common at showdown, thus a weak version without much going on in Omaha is likely a payoff hand.

For my money there is probably no such thing as a bad Dramaha variant. Make up a game on the spot if you want, but if it’s Dramaha you can always deal me in. Give these variants a try sometime and you might end up feeling the same way. ♠

Kevin Haney is a former actuary but left the corporate job to focus on his passions for poker and fitness. The certified personal trainer owned a gym in New Jersey, but has since moved to Las Vegas. He started playing the game back in 2003, and particularly enjoys taking new players interested in mixed games under his wing and quickly making them proficient in all variants. Learn more or just say hello with an email to haneyk612@gmail.com.