What is Duplicate Poker?
Duplicate poker is an ever-evolving poker variant that attempts to eliminate much of the luck involved in traditional poker. Because of its evolving nature, and because of the limitations of live play, quite a few different versions of duplicate poker exist. While the basics explained below may not hold strictly true for all variations of duplicate poker, these descriptions should satisfy curious players and should decrease the learning curve for those interested in trying the game out.
The Basics
Duplicate poker is played at multiple tables and each table is dealt the same holecards and community cards. This being the case, a player can play only if another player is sitting in the corresponding seat on one of the other tables. For instance, if you are in seat No. 1, a player must be seated in seat No. 1 at one of the other tables for you to receive cards.
The reason for this is that you are dealt the exact same holecards as your same-seat competitors and are technically playing against
them. Each player has "total chips," which serve to score the player, and "hand chips," which are refilled for each hand. Whichever seat No. 1 player ends with the most hand chips in a given hand earns chips toward his total chips. Thus, a player can technically still
win total chips in a hand he
lost at his table simply by losing the
fewest hand chips compared to his same-seat opponents at other tables. Similarly, a player can lose from his total chips stack for winning the fewest chips in a hand compared to his same-seat opponents, even though he won the hand at his table.
When playing online, the total chips are usually updated based on the results of each individual hand. However, this method would be cumbersome and time-consuming for live play, thus the standings in live play are usually updated after a predetermined series of hands. Also, after a subset of hands, players are reseated according to a predetermined rotation that, ideally, gives all players a fair chance to face different types of opponents and to hold different positional advantages.
Whether online or live, duplicate poker tournaments are usually run with a predetermined total number of hands to be played. The player with the highest total chip count after the hands have been played is declared the winner. Some tournaments allow for the elimination of players if their total chip count falls to or below zero.
Team Play
The game can be played in a team format in which, for example, six teams of six members apiece sit at six tables. Each team has one player sitting at each table in different positions. These positions are organized so the six different sets of holecards are dealt to one member of each team (for example, if one team's player has pocket aces, each team will have a player who holds aces in the same position). The positions are also organized such that each team has positional advantage on each other team at least once.
This style of play allows for head-to-head competitions between teams of professional poker players (for instance, Team Full Tilt versus UltimateBet's sponsored pros) or even rival colleges or companies.
Inspiration
The game was inspired by duplicate bridge, which follows the same basic foundational ideas. The poker variation looks to put skill into the forefront of the game by severely reducing the effects of chance. The game purports to rely more heavily on skill because a player's performance is compared only to opponents in the exact same position with the exact same cards. It truly becomes a situation in which a player is playing the other players, not the cards in his hand.
