Poker vs Rummy

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Jeffrey | Poker Strategy, Uncategorized

So you know it, you love it (or hate it) and you play it (almost) every day. Poker! But there’s another really popular card game breaking its way into the world of online gaming. Rummy!

These two games, poker and rummy, have a lot more in common than you might think:

You can play both online.
Online poker and online rummy are both games that you can play from the comfort of your home against players from all over the world. You can play them to make money, you can play them for the competition or you can play them simply to have fun.

They are both card games and as such, they have similar theoreticalstrategy basis.
Both of them have players that are better and players that are worse, players that win and players that lose. The good thing is that you can get better at both games and you can also start winning and crushing at both.

Strategy similarities

There are many poker games that differ a lot from one and other, but they all have the same theoretical basis for strategies behind winning plays. One of the absolute basics is knowing the probabilities of certain scenarios happening. Some are easy and pure math, like knowing that the probability of one suit being dealt is 1:3 (so you’ll hit your flush once in every four tries), some are hard, like knowing the equity of your hand versus your opponents range of 27-35% of top hands.

Rummy has many games as well and everything you learned about probability from playing poker is also applicable in rummy. Need to know what the odds are of drawing that King you need to complete your meld? It’s the total number of cards minus all the cards you see minus 1, to one (given you are playing with only one deck). Probability is calculated exactly the same way no matter what card game you are playing. The only difference is that in some card games you have more information and in some less. That brings us to the next point…

Edge/skill differences

What is your edge in either game? Does it take more skill to play rummy or poker? Well, it all comes down to information. You probably already heard that poker is a game of limited information. You always have to fill in the blanks with educated guesses. It’s the same with rummy, except you get more information in general. Of course this also depends on the game you are playing. In 7 Card Stud you are likely to have more information available than in most rummy games, but let’s take a look at some more common examples. In Texas Hold’em you only get to see your two hole cards and the five community cards, that’s 7 cards. In a normal Gin Rummy game, you get dealt 7 cards at the beginning and you get to see many more in the discard pile as the game progresses.

See where I’m going with this?

You get a lot more information in rummy. When playing live you can even deduct your opponents holding by looking at how he places the cards in his hand. What does this mean? You can get a bigger edge over your opponents, if you know how to use that information well. So you could say there is more skill involved than in poker, but that’s not exactly true. The luck and skill percentage do not necessarily belong to the same scale. It takes a different, yet similar, skill set to be a winner at rummy than in poker, but if you don’t like “poker variance”, you might want to give rummy a go… although they take similar skill level, there is a lot less luck involved in rummy.

Why would you play either?

Because all card games give your brain a great exercise, if you are really good, you can make money with both and most of all, because they are both a lot of fun to play!

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