I had a successful poker night last night at a game in Alexandria. I had to adjust strategy in a few ways:

• I've gotten so used to playing no-limit, I had to make the adjustment into limit; one needs to play different hands, and make different types of bets and calls.


• I'm used to Las Vegas rules of hi-lo split without declaration. In games with declaration, the extra round of betting has to be accounted for. Plus, one has to play different hands. In Omaha, one can normally make calls on the assumption that if one is beaten on the high, there are still outs on the low (or vice versa). But if there is a declaration required, one has to commit to a strategy, requiring a different mix of hands.


• One player kept calling a game of hi-lo split without a qualifier. This seems a huge design mistake: it means that one plays A2 or A23 (and even A3) really hard with an early near-lock low with a free-roll for the high, and destroys pot odds for chasing high hands. (Thanks to the declaration rule, I was saved in a big pot when I was the only one who went low with my pathetic A23J when the 2 and 3 bricked on the board. It was nice pulling A23J in that hand when I announced before the deal that there were no circumstances I was going to call or make a pre-flop bet unless I had A2.) The only danger is being quartered when two A2s get in the hand and both pump up the pot to the benefit of the high hand.


• I hate the rule that a wheel (or other straight or flush) isn't a low. I almost cost myself a scoop one Omaha hand when it my 65 low turned out not to be a low, but fortunately it held up because of a 7 in my hand.


• I learned a new game, "Kenya," a weird combination of draw and five-card stud with three common cards. One starts with a five-card hand, keeps two to five cards, with all face down. The third card is dealt face up or revealed by players who kept more than two cards; then a round of betting; then a common card; then a fourth card; then a second common card; then a fifth card; then a final common card; then a declaration for a seventh round of betting, and players make the best five-card hand. It took me a while to develop a strategy for this game (and I cost myself a lot of money one hand by paying for several rounds of betting to see if my 65 low could compete against two made 64s).