'Tahoe' in Fort Lauderdale

After the evening sessions of the seven-day Southeastern Bridge Championships at the Radisson Bahia Mar Hotel in Fort Lauderdale (about 30 miles north of Miami), a large number of bridge players and I found our way over to the Seminole Indian Casino in Hollywood, Florida, about a 15-minute drive from the Radisson.

Although the Indian casinos in Florida have poker rooms, for many years now, the problem with poker in Florida has been that the state gaming code prohibits the size of any poker pot from exceeding $10! Thus, public live-action poker games in Florida are played at stakes of 25 cents-50 cents or less! We understand that the Florida Legislature is currently considering several remedial modifications.

Several of the Indian casinos in Florida feature poker tournaments that cleverly operate within the law by offering first-place prizes that do not exceed the $10-per-hand legal limit. For example, an Omaha high-low minitournament consisting of one table of 10 players and lasting 50 hands can legally have a $500 first prize (the buy-in is $105).

Although I normally prefer to play Omaha, I do not like Omaha tournaments that last for a specified number of hands (and after the last hand, whoever has the most chips wins), because the last several hands are always wild and chaotic. And on those last hands, all of the remaining also-rans pool all of their chips into the pot so that the lucky winner(s) often overtakes the previous leader(s). Thus, most poker and tournament skills are negated or dwarfed by the luck of the last hand.

I did enjoy playing in the Tahoe minitournaments, which were also played for a specific number of hands. However, by the time the last few hands came around, there were usually only three or four players left. What is "Tahoe"? Essentially, it's three-card hold'em, and you can use up to two cards from your hand.

You might think of Tahoe as the ultimate solution to the old pineapple controversy: Is it better to discard the third card before or after the flop? In Tahoe, you simply keep it. Does the third card improve the game? Not from a skill point of view, but it does increase the action – and it certainly helps in hitting the large royal flush jackpots.

Since there were six or seven players seeing every flop, I found myself calling whenever my three cards contained any good two-card hold'em hand, and I often raised when my three cards made two or three good hold'em hands. I would be interested to hear from anyone about optimum calling strategy. If Mike Caro and I agree with it, we might add it in an appendix of our forthcoming book.

Thus, if you want to play reasonable poker in Florida, you either play in one of these poker tournaments or hop aboard one of the many cruise ships that operate daily and offer offshore poker outside of the three-mile limit.

In early April, I went on a SeaEscape Cruise that left from Port Everglades (five minutes from the Fort Lauderdale beaches). Once past the three-mile limit, the poker room spread hold'em, Omaha ($10-$20), and seven-card stud – and featured a bona fide Omaha high-low tournament with about 60 entrants (the winner won $2,600 and qualified for the Tournament of Champions).

At the final table while playing no-limit Omaha with four players remaining, I had about $40,000 in chips, and was in the big blind with K-Q-3-2. The chip leader (with about $90,000) on my left called, and the small blind added $4,000 to call. The flop came 7-7-5 and everyone checked.

The turn card was a king. The small blind on my right checked. The player on my left had been betting big all night whenever he held anything, and I was sure that he had no 7. What would you do in this situation?

It seemed perfectly clear to push in my remaining $32,000, since I probably had the best high hand unless the opponent on my left had an A-K. And I also had the "emergency" 3-2 low draw.

I thought I had an excellent chance of buying the pot ($24,000) right then and there. But no, my opponent on the left pushed in his large stack and the other opponent folded. Since I was all in, I tabled my cards – and he showed pocket kings! Unlucky. And no low card saved me on the river.

Although it didn't work that time, I believe that pushing in your stack in that sort of tournament situation has to be correct if you judge that neither opponent has a 7. All in all, however, I thoroughly enjoyed the cruise.