No Limit Texas Holdem can become quite a grind so there will be days when you’ll be sick and tired of seeing the same two hole cards, the same five community cards, the same combinations, and even the same players sometimes. That’s why we’re letting you know that there are some legitimate alternatives on the web. You could try Omaha or even better yet, you could try completely different games like Lowball or unconventional ones like Badugi and Open Face Chinese.

The Operators:

PokerStars

PokerStars is definitely the best poker room out there in terms of variety. Besides Holdem and the classic Omaha, you'll find different other variants like 7-Card Stud and Razz, 5 Card Draw, the rising 2-7 Triple Draw, not to mention the mixed games like H.O.R.S.E and 8-Game. What’s more is that you can find all of those games under both the ring/cash and tournament tab. How about unconventional games? Yes, you can find those too and most importantly, you’ll also find plenty of action. Aren’t sure where to start? How about the following poker games?

iPoker/Ongame

The Two European poker networks decided to play it safe from the beginning and didn’t introduced any unconventional poker games. They have the old Holdem, Omaha with both variants - Hi and Hi/Lo and three Stud games. Unfortunately, the traffic is mostly nonexistent and you are likely to sit idle if you want to play some 7 Card Stud or Razz in Europe. Except maybe you are in Finland.

TonyBet

The gambling operator owned by no other than Antanas ‘Tony G’ Guoga launched its poker software by offering at first only Open Face Chinese Poker. Afterwards, Holdem and Omaha were introduced. What is this OFC you wonder?

The Games:

Badugi

Badugi is a fun draw game similar to Lowball, allegedly invented by the Koreans. The name may derive from the Korean word badug which means a black and white pattern.What is truly unconventional is that Badugi only requires four cards in order to make a proper hand, not five.

The best hand or Badugi is A234 of four different suits. How do you rank one hand with another? By comparing the highest card (Ace is low). The low card always wins. Also if you have two cards of the same suit the highest is eliminated so basically you only have a three-card hand which ranks lower than the four-card hand. The same applies to pairs and three of a kind; only one card of the two/three is actually in the game. The worst hand in Badugi? KKKK! Pretty crazy right?

2-7 Single Draw

2-7 Single Draw or Kansas City Lowball plays exactly like the rising 2-7 Triple Draw only it has one drawing round. The best hand is 2-3-4-5-7 with no flush. Flushes, pairs, trips and straights are very bad like a 2-7 in Holdem. So that means you’re playing to literally make the worst hand possible. Notice the gap in 2-3-4-5-7: the higher placed, the better so 2-3-(gap)-5-6-7 beats 2-(gap)-4-5-6-7. And we’ve just scratched the surface of this unique high-variance game.

5 Card Omaha

This is basically Omaha with one more hole card for you. So instead of four cards, you receive five and as in Omaha you make a hand by using exactly two cards from your hand and three from the community board. No more, no less. Oh, the variance…

Courchevel

No, we’re not swearing nor are we sending you to the French Alps. This is actually a poker game popular in France and the UK. It’s basically 5 Card Omaha with a twist. Not only do you receive the five cards preflop but also a community card is revealed...YES PREFLOP. Which means on the flop, the players get dealt only two cards, instead of three. Yes, exactly, even more variance. Oh those damn Frenchies….

Both 5 Card Omaha and Courchevel have a Hi/Lo variant besides the traditional Hi.

6 Card Omaha

You probably know what this means right? Yes, yes, variance on steroids but how about the actual game? You now receive SIX hole cards and unfortunately, you can only use two of them plus three community cards. Don’t worry, at least there is no Hi/Lo variant...thank God.

5 Card Stud

Although it was invented by the Americans, 5 Card Stud is quite popular in Finland. It plays like the classic 7 Card Stud Hi with bring-in and antes only with five cards: one face down and four face up. In Finland though, there is a twist (but not on iPoker/Ongame): four-card straights and flushes count. Does that mean Santa Claus plays it? We need to double-check that before giving you a straight answer.

Open Face Chinese Poker

OFC is not your average five-card poker game, it’s entirely different which makes it somehow interesting. Some call it a turn-based card-game and it may very well be because it definitely doesn’t look like poker. You receive a total of 13 cards and your have to arrange it in a specific pattern: 3 at the top, 5 in the middle and 5 at the bottom. At showdown, you compare each set of cards with your opponent and receive points like in gin rummy (based on the rank of the sets). There are also foul penalties and scoring bonuses. That’s all we can say for now. We leave it up to you dig deeper and consider it truly worthwhile.

What About Six Plus Holdem?

The game know as Six Plus Holdem was first introduced to the poker community by the likes of Phil Ivey and Tom Dwan. No poker room offers this game yet but we might see it online in the near future. Why? Because it sounds like fun.

Six Plus Holdem is a holdem game played only with the cards ranked six or higher which means the deck has 36 cards instead of 52. There are other significant differences: as opposed to the classic holdem, three-of-a-kind ranks higher than a straight and a flush beats the full house.Some variants even change the river play so instead of the fifth community card, each active player receives a hole card. Talking about opportunities...

Could these game spread and grow in popularity in the foreseeable future? What do you think? What games have you tried so far or are you willing to try in the future?