Sometimes I just don't understand 2-7, are the swings suppose to be this bad when you're playing tight aggressive? I'll either burn through $20 losing to draws, or missing my good draws, or I'll quickly make 10-20 BB, but I always play the same way. Whats the advantage of a skilled player over a a bunch of donks? I know that the edge in Hold 'em is a lot smaller then the edge in say Stud, where a skilled player will dominate a n00b much more often then in hold 'em. Where does 2-7 stand in there? I'm not claiming to be a skilled 2-7 player, but at these stakes on stars there's a lot of people playing pretty poorly.

first, i regularly have 100BB swings playing 2-7 against any group of players that isn't retarded tight/passive.

second (and kinda unfortunately), most of the players that *kind of* know how to play 2-7 are extremely tight/passive. this makes up a large majority of the 2/4-5/10 ish players on stars a lot of the time. the reason these guys are so frustrating is that they won't allow you to maximize value on your hands because they won't be willing to go 7-8 bets with #4s/5s, and won't ever try to make you break, instead just calling down and patting with anything from a #2 to a 35678. they'll never be winning players unless they're playing total idiots because they won't maximize the value of their own hands, but they will only lose slowly vs. good players because they won't allow any pot to go to multiple bets on any street.

in general, though, you have to be able to step back and really think about what makes good players better than bad ones or mediocre (tight/passive) ones at 2-7 to understand the higher variance of the game.

very bad players will consistently draw extremely rough or even dead, and not understand positional value at all, and in so doing will be spewing multiple bets on many hands that a good player would save. you have a couple options against these guys: you can either play the ss2 TAG style against them for a reasonable winrate at lower variance by drawing smooth and pushing reasonable edges, or you can play TONS of hands against them in position since you'll be able to play the third draw so much better than them late in hands. if you do the latter, you're going to, like, SUPER up your variance because you're going to be pushing a lot of 55/45 edges for one or two extra bets, but your longterm winrate can hit even 10BB/100 if you really know what you're doing and the villains are bad enough.

the tight/passive guys (they've usually read ss2 but don't understand the game well enough to really have any flexibility to their play) are a different sort of beast, though, and can be quite frustrating. you'll have to snow them a fair amount if they're finding the fold button on the end if you really want to maximize your wins against them, and that style is going to have a lot of variance since snowing people in the right spots is basically depending on them not hitting their passively played draws, which is another one of those 55/45 or 60/40 edges that you're pushing for multiple bets. alternatively, you can play similarly tight against these sorts of tards, but if you do that, you HAVE TO HAVE TO HAVE TO be maximizing longterm value in order to show a positive winrate. this means that you're sometimes going to be betting into better hands, since they'll be playing a 34578 the same way as a 23567, but if you have a good feel for how often they have each one and play accordingly, it will work out longterm. position is also very important against these sorts of opponents, as it's not necessary to feel out their passively played range if you know that they're drawing on the end, etc.

against good players, the game changes in a pretty profound way, and it's not really worth going into too much detail about if you're struggling with the other types of players out there. there's a lot of patting light, representation, gear-changing, and advertising ranges that can be later manipulated with thinner and thinner valuebets, but that's not to say that you can't beat those games if you have a thorough understanding of how the game works.

hope that helps.

wow, thanks, great post and very informative. I've watched some higher stake $100/$200 and noticed how different the game is, a lot more complexity to it, unfortunately my bankroll can't handle anything higher than .5/1 atm. I'll keep at it though

oh, for .50/1, and probably as you're learning the game in general, try to start off by playing pretty loose early in hands and pretty tight later on, unless guys are showing down ridic hands consistently. at that limit, it's not uncommon to have at least 1-2 players who don't really know the rules, and you're usually better off nitting it up against those types after the first draw since you'll never have a clue what they have. they'll also let you draw cheap if they don't make their hand, though, so you can actually limp 23, 24, and 27 hands in position fairly often without getting punished for it.

comparatively, to hold em, omaha or stud, is 2-7 worth learning?

you think you can get a decent bet/100 ratio?

Stakes?

Hard to find a lot of action at most levels, so table selection might simply be a matter of 'is anybody playing or not'.

Still, I'm a big proponent of learning, if even to stretch your mind in different directions.