Short Deck Poker

Short Deck poker is the high-stakes variant that has spread from the biggest cash games in Asia to everyday online tables. If you already know poker in Macau or Texas Hold'em, you are most of the way there: the structure of the game is identical, but the smaller deck changes the odds enough that hands play differently, draws hit more often, and the rankings of made hands shift. This page walks through the whole game: the deck, the betting, the rankings, the math, and where to actually sit down and play.

What Short Deck poker is: 36 cards, sixes and up

Short Deck gets its name from the deck. All of the 2s, 3s, 4s and 5s are removed, leaving 36 cards: only ranks 6 and above remain, from the 6 up to the ace¹. That is why the game is often called 6+ Hold'em or Six Plus Hold'em, because the deck only consists of cards 6 and up⁶.

Everything else will look familiar. Each player receives two hole cards, and five community cards are dealt in the middle; you make the best five-card hand from those seven cards¹. The game uses one 36-card deck, and the deck is shuffled after each hand⁵. There are four betting rounds, the preflop, flop, turn and river, exactly as in Texas Hold'em¹.

The smaller deck has a knock-on effect on everything that follows. Premium starting hands show up more often, draws complete more often, and the relative strength of made hands changes, which is why the hand rankings are adjusted⁷. The result is what one operator calls a high-energy twist on Hold'em, with more all-ins and bigger swings⁸.

How the game plays: antes instead of blinds

The biggest structural difference from Texas Hold'em is the betting before the cards are dealt. Most Short Deck games are played as no limit, but there is no small blind and no big blind. Instead, everyone at the table pays an ante before each hand begins⁴.

On top of the universal ante, the most common Short Deck method is a button blind setup: whoever has the dealer button in front of them also posts a mandatory second ante¹. That second ante is typically about 2 to 4 times the normal ante³. So on a table with a $10 ante, you can expect the button to put in somewhere between $20 and $40 extra.

The minimum raise preflop is equal to double the value of the ante¹. From there the betting works like any no-limit Hold'em game: you can raise any amount up to everything in front of you, across the four betting rounds of preflop, flop, turn and river¹.

One thing you will not find is a straddle. There is no straddle option in Short Deck⁵, which makes sense given there are no blinds to straddle over. If you are used to live games where the player under the gun throws in a straddle, leave that habit at the door.

Hand rankings: what changes from Texas Hold'em

Here is the part every new Short Deck player needs to study before sitting down. The rankings for Short Deck are slightly different from standard poker hand rankings⁹, and the single most important change is this: a flush beats a full house².

Why? With only 36 cards, each suit has just 9 cards instead of 13, so flushes are genuinely harder to make than full houses. The full Short Deck ranking order, from strongest to weakest, is:

A royal flush is still an ace-high straight flush, and a straight flush is still a five-card straight all in the same suit². Below that, the flush sits above the full house, and everything else looks like the list you know from Texas Hold'em².

The ace has a new job in this game. Aces play as high or low, but because there is no 2 through 5, A-6-7-8-9 is the low straight and 10-J-Q-K-A remains the high straight². A nine-high straight of 9-8-7-6-A takes some getting used to¹, and the same logic applies to straight flushes: A-6-7-8-9 of one suit would be the low straight flush². The traditional ace-to-five wheel is not available in Short Deck, since the cards that would make it do not exist¹⁰.

Two smaller points are worth knowing. First, there is no suit ranking in Short Deck: when two players hold the same type of hand, the highest card wins, so a king-high flush beats a queen-high flush regardless of suits³. Second, rankings vary slightly between operators. In some Six Plus Hold'em variants, three of a kind beats a straight¹, and at least one room ranks straights above flushes¹⁰. Most formats follow the table above, but check the specific rules of the room you are playing in before you trust a flush over a full house¹¹.

Why hands run closer: equity and drawing odds

The smaller deck compresses the odds. Big starting hands come around more often, draws get there more often, and the gap between a strong hand and a weaker one narrows. This is the section that explains why Short Deck plays so much more aggressively than Texas Hold'em.

Start with pocket pairs. A pocket pair appears twice as often in Short Deck as in Hold'em¹. If you hold a pocket pair, you will flop a set 17% of the time, as opposed to 12% in traditional no-limit Hold'em¹.

Draws improve even more dramatically. With a flush draw on the flop, there is just a 30% chance of completing it by the river, and with a flush draw on the turn, the probability drops to 16.6%¹. Those numbers are lower than Hold'em, where the same situations offer a 35% and 19.5% chance, because each suit has fewer cards left to hit¹. Straights are the opposite: with an open-ended straight draw on the flop, the chances of making it by the river are a little over 45%, and in Short Deck that number rises dramatically to 45.5%, compared with 31.5% in Hold'em¹. Holding J-T or T-9, you will pick up that straight draw on the flop 19% of the time¹.

Starting hand equity runs closer too. Take a suited J-T against A-K. If both are suited, the J-T has around 47% equity in Short Deck, compared to 40% in standard Hold'em. If the A-K is unsuited, a suited J-T is almost exactly 50% to win in Short Deck¹. Hands that would be clearly behind in Hold'em become coin flips here.

What counts as premium also shrinks. The only pocket pairs that can be considered premium hands in Short Deck Hold'em are pocket aces and kings, along with A-K suited¹. Everything else loses value relative to the connected and suited hands that flop straight draws so often.

For a quick way to estimate your chances at the table, use this rule of thumb: multiply your possible outs by 3 with one card to come, and by 6 with two cards remaining¹. That approximates your hand's equity on the spot, and it reflects how much more live every draw is in this game.

Where to play Short Deck online: stakes and table sizes

Short Deck is primarily an online game today, and it is offered by several of the major poker rooms. In Macau itself, live poker rooms are limited, so most players who want Short Deck play online; see our page on online poker in Macau for the wider picture.

Table sizes are small. The minimum number of players at a table is 2 and the maximum is 6⁵. Many rooms run their Short Deck tables as 5-max, meaning a maximum of 5 players per table⁶, which naturally creates looser, faster games than a full ring.

Stakes start very low. On CoinPoker you can play Short Deck on 6-max tables with stakes from $0.01 blinds up to $50 blinds¹², and the same range of $0.01 to $50 stakes on 6-handed tables is available on its mobile app¹³. On Natural8, buy-ins start as low as $1⁶, and the same $1 minimum buy-in appears across its Short Deck games¹⁴. At the low end, GGPoker's 6+ Short Deck lists a $0.05 stake with a $2.00 default buy-in, and a $0.10 stake with a $4.00 default buy-in¹⁵.

At the top end, the game lives up to its high-stakes reputation. Natural8's VIP Short Deck tables are built around a button blind rather than a conventional ante structure. A table with a $300 button blind carries a $300 minimum buy-in and a $25,000 maximum¹⁶, while other listings show the same $300 button blind with minimum buy-ins of $15,000¹⁷ and $25,000¹⁸. At a $500 button blind, the minimum buy-in climbs to $200,000¹⁷. These are the kinds of tables that gave Short Deck its name in the high-stakes world, and they sit at the very top of the online poker economy.

One quirk of the VIP tables: for Short Deck tables, chips exceeding 40 times the button blind can be removed⁷. So if you run a big stack up at a high-stakes table, anything above that 40-times threshold can be taken off the table.

If you are curious how Short Deck compares to the other poker on offer, most rooms spread it alongside Texas Hold'em and Omaha, and the same account usually covers all of them¹⁹.

Practical rules to know before you sit down

A few final details that trip up newcomers:

• Age. Players must be 18 or above to take part⁶.
• No straddle. There is no straddle option in Short Deck⁵. The forced money comes from the ante everyone posts plus the button's second ante.
• Minimum raise. Preflop, the minimum raise is double the ante¹.
• Table size. Tables run from 2 to 6 players⁵, with many rooms capping at 5⁶. Expect short-handed play and more hands per hour than a full table.
• Chip management. On Short Deck tables, chips exceeding 40 times the button blind can be removed⁷, so you cannot build an unlimited stack at one seat.
• Fees. Tournament fees in the industry typically work out to 5 to 10% of the money in each pot⁷.
• Sizing. If you study the game further, note that overbets of 1.5x to 2x the pot are part of advanced Short Deck strategy³, a reflection of how often draws get there.

The single biggest adjustment for a Hold'em player is the rankings. Say it to yourself before your first session: a flush beats a full house, and A-6-7-8-9 is a straight. Get those two facts locked in and the rest of the game will feel familiar quickly. The deck is smaller, the action is faster, and the swings are bigger, which is exactly the combination that made Short Deck the game of choice for the biggest pots in high-stakes poker.