Columnist Jeff Haney: One reader who is a hold ‘em holdout, a purist who still wants to give ‘mixed games’ a chance

Wednesday, Dec. 28, 2005 | 9:39 a.m.

Jeff Haney's sports betting column appears Monday, Friday (gaming) and Wednesday (poker). Reach him at (702) 259-4041 or haney@lasvegassun.com.

It might sound sacrilegious to say so, but not everyone in Southen Nevada has caught Texas hold 'em fever.

Several years into the poker craze, some hold 'em holdouts remain.

Dave Jungers, a reader from North Las Vegas, writes:

"I have played poker almost all my life. From high school, the military and during my 9 to 5 daytime job I have sat down many times with my various poker cronies playing 7- and 5-card stud and 5-card draw. These are the games that REAL men play, where the ability to understand your fellow player is most important and mathematical skill rules the game. But we have never played this current fad called Texas hold 'em, which is another name for 'showdown,' where luck determines many winners ...

"Oh, if only Gardena, Calif., had the card clubs they once had, where draw was the only game that was played and hold 'em was thought to be a wrestling term."

He got off a couple of other clever lines in his impassioned argument against hold 'em, but Jungers' is clearly the minority opinion.

Texas hold 'em -- particularly the no-limit variety -- is driving the poker boom.

In 2002, before poker exploded, Henderson-based Two Plus Two Publishing sold two books on hold 'em for every stud book it sold, according to Two Plus Two's Mason Malmuth. Today, the ratio is 70 to 1 in favor of hold 'em -- and that's not counting books on hold 'em tournaments. If those were included, the ratio would be about 150 to 1, Malmuth said.

And it's not as if sales of stud books are dropping -- they're holding steady, Malmuth said.

"No-limit hold 'em shows so well on TV, and games with small buy-ins have helped no-limit hold 'em (thrive)," Malmuth said. "The bad player doesn't get trapped for as much money as he would in a no-limit hold 'em game with a big buy-in."

Unlike Mr. Jungers, I harbor no nostalgia for Gardena, having missed that town's poker heyday. (The closest I came was watching Robert Altman's "California Split," which portrays the SoCal poker scene of the early 1970s.)

Nor do I agree with his out-of-hand dismissal of hold 'em as a game based entirely on luck. Certainly hold 'em has its share of complexities.

In other ways, though, I'm from the Dave Jungers mold.

Maybe it's my Jesuitical world view, but I have always sought a more well-rounded poker experience.

I recall venturing in the mid-1990s to Atlantic City -- a 7-card stud town at the time -- to test my hold 'em skills. If memory serves, those seaside poker rooms were dominated by stud games and New York bookmakers (at least two at every table, it seemed). Only a couple of tables were reserved for that exotic form of poker called Texas hold 'em, and those were populated by strangers who had drifted in from the West, or plain old East Coast eccentrics such as myself.

Today, I prefer playing at what are now usually called "mixed games" tables. A typical mixed game might include rounds of hold 'em, 7-card stud, 7-card stud high-low split, Omaha, razz and triple-draw, rotated in a regular pattern. (Sorry, Mr. Jungers, but no 5-card stud that I'm aware of.)

In Las Vegas recently, I have found good mixed games at the poker rooms at the Bellagio (the $40-$80 limit appeals to me, though it is also spread at much higher limits) and the Wynn Las Vegas($10-$20 limit).

Tournament poker star Steve Hudak plays a little higher than me, but he also prefers mixed games when he's playing for cash rather than tournament titles.

"I think playing all the forms of poker is a true test of poker skill," said Hudak, who moved to Las Vegas from Maryland this year to pursue his career as a poker pro. "It gets boring playing one game, like hold 'em, over and over. I like mixing it up with the weird games, too."

Hudak plays mixed games at the Bellagio at the $200-$400 and $400-$800 levels, and said he recently "took a shot" at a $600-$1,200 game.

In the "Big Game" in the Bellagio's high-limit poker room, the stakes get higher yet -- and mixed games are the order of the day, according to Lyle Berman, a regular participant.

"We play up to 10 different games, depending on who's at the table," said Berman, a successful businessman and high-limit poker player.

They do offer a true test of poker skill, but players in the Big Game have a more prosaic reason for sticking with mixed games, Berman said. The Big Game attracts players who have world-class skills in one form of poker, but lesser talents in other forms -- so mixed games serve to level the field.

"There are a lot of specialists in the poker world, and we don't want any of them," Berman said.