Are Mixed Games primed to boom?

With live poker numbers breaking records globally, is it time for a resurgence in games beyond Texas Hold'em?

In tandem with the world’s post-pandemic reopening, live poker has been experiencing a surge in popularity. Attendance records at major, mid-major, and daily live poker events seem to be falling left and right, and poker tables the world over are increasingly packed.

That’s wonderful! Just don’t call it a “boom”. At the end of the day, what we’ve seen represents a (very welcome) return to the slow, steady growth in numbers that we witnessed in the pre-pandemic years post Black Friday.

What, then – barring widespread increased legalization of online poker in numerous jurisdictions worldwide – ought to be the primary way to grow poker further in 2023?

The most common response you’ll usually hear from poker advocates is to bring more women to the poker tables. Also typical, though somewhat less so, would be suggestions that we market more to new (i.e., newly of legal age) players or seniors, as these populations tend to have more time and disposable income on their hands.

All three of those suggestions are great ones, but perhaps the time has finally arrived to consider growing poker via an entirely alternative method, namely by promoting games other than Texas Hold’em?

The rise of the Mix

For all intents and purposes “poker” and “Texas Hold’em” have been synonymous terms for the last 20 years, since Chris Moneymaker’s WSOP Main Event win. But there are dozens more poker variants to enjoy, as anyone who has ever played the WSOP Dealer’s Choice event, or perhaps a wild and crazy home game, knows. And ever so slowly, we’re seeing non-Hold’em games get a little more spotlight.

Just last month, PokerStrategy Editor Barry Carter wrote of his excitement to be attending the Festival at Dusk Till Dawn, known for offering a wide variety of side events at low three-figure buy-in points that feature less commonly played variants like 8-game, PLO, and Sviten Special.

On the other end of the spectrum, the PokerGO Tour recently experimented with running a Mixed Game series and is currently running a PLO series for the high roller crowd, both for the first time, and the attendance numbers have been nothing short of stupendous.

Hardcore Mixed Game fans have been clamoring to watch the action, so it would come as no surprise to see future editions of both these series broadcast on PokerGO.

Logistical hurdles for Mixed Game Poker

While currently more obscure to the casual poker player, there’s no objective reason why, with enough exposure and practice, legions of people couldn’t learn and be enticed to play these other variants of the game.

That said, it’s precisely that “enough exposure and practice” part of the equation that has stymied the growth of Mixed Game poker until this point.

To paraphrase (and invert) the famous saying, Texas Hold’em famously takes a lifetime to master, but just five minutes to learn. Each new variant of poker would similarly take just a few minutes to learn, but the challenge of learning multiple new poker variants all in one go is often intimidating to most players.

By the same token, it might be easy enough for dealers to quickly learn how to run a Texas Hold’em table, but a significant amount of additional time would need to be invested in training to learn how to deal the other variants.

Plainly put, a lot more “efforting” is required by all parties involved: the players, the dealers, and poker room management, to get Mixed Games going. Plus, we all know that liquidity is the lifeblood of poker; it’s far easier to get a Hold’em table started – and beginning to generate rake – than a Mixed Game table.

How to get Mixed Games to thrive

The original poker boom didn’t just happen because people started watching the game on their television screens. Online poker was readily available when they wanted to try their hand at Texas Hold’em.

All the aforementioned logistical hurdles to getting more Mixed Games going become easily alleviated in the online poker sphere. Microstakes play, and getting the reps in, is imminently possible… so long as Mixed Games are actually available online.

Pot Limit Omaha aside, for the most part, the only place online you can regularly find most Mixed Game poker being spread is on PokerStars. Other operators seemingly have not seen the value of developing software to spread more poker variants on their platforms, but perhaps now is the time?

On the live poker front, it seems like concerted efforts – such as the Cardplayer Lifestyle Mixed Game Festival, which offers big-ticket prizes like an EPT Prague package and the unique opportunity to mingle with poker glitterati – need to be made if we hope to attract more players to Mixed Games on the grassroots level. More venues would need to get on board, too. The host venue for said festival, Resorts World Las Vegas, has arguably become the poker world’s epicenter of Mixed Game play since opening its doors in the summer of 2021. It has specifically distinguished itself by going the extra mile to regularly spread mixes at stakes of $4/8 all the way up to the nosebleeds, with significant amounts of additional time and effort invested in training the entire dealer staff in all poker variants.

Conclusion

We take for granted the fact that we can walk into any poker room around the world and find Hold’em games running. Wouldn’t it be lovely for poker to be popular enough that we’d also see low-stakes Mixed Game running everywhere, too?

I suppose that probably sounds like a pipe dream, but once upon a time it was difficult to imagine Texas Hold’em being played anywhere outside Fremont Street once a year as the featured spectacle of a gambler’s convention. Mixed Game poker certainly has the potential to thrive. If they build it, they will come.

Do you want to see more mixed games events, live and online? Let us know in the comments: