Short deck poker — also called 6+ Hold’em — is Texas Hold’em played with a 36-card deck, with every 2, 3, 4 and 5 stripped out. Removing those sixteen cards flips two rules: a flush now beats a full house, and A-6-7-8-9 counts as the lowest straight. The format was born in Asia’s high-stakes cash games and remains far more popular here than anywhere else in the poker world.
Sixteen missing cards, two rewritten rules
Start with what stays the same. You are still dealt two hole cards, there is still a flop, turn and river, and the betting is still no-limit. Everything a Hold’em player already knows about position, bet sizing and reading ranges carries straight over.
What changes is the deck. With only sixes through aces in play, there are 36 cards instead of 52. Suits are unaffected — nine cards per suit rather than thirteen — which makes flushes genuinely harder to complete. Meanwhile pairing the board and filling up becomes easier, because every card left in the deck is one your opponents are also more likely to hold. That inversion is why full houses drop below flushes in the ranking order.
The ace does double duty. It is still the highest card, but it also slots in below the six to make A-6-7-8-9 — the short deck equivalent of the wheel. New players miss this straight constantly in their first session.
Short deck hand rankings, strongest to weakest
- Royal flush
- Straight flush
- Four of a kind
- Flush
- Full house
- Straight
- Three of a kind
- Two pair
- One pair
- High card
One caveat worth knowing before you sit down: a minority of rulesets — mostly older private games and some club apps — rank three of a kind above a straight as well. The mainstream online version used by GGPoker’s short deck tables and by the big live tours keeps straights ahead of trips and only moves the flush. If you are joining an unfamiliar home game or club, ask which version is running. It is a two-second question that changes how you play every set.
The numbers that make it an action game
Short deck is not just Hold’em with a smaller deck — the probabilities shift enough to change correct play. Commonly cited figures put flopping a set with a pocket pair at roughly 18%, against about 11.8% in a full-deck game. Flop two pair and you are around 40% to fill up by the river. Straights show up something like 25-30% more often than they do in standard Hold’em.
Practically, that means the hands you were taught to stack off with are worth much less. Top pair is close to meaningless. A flopped set is a decent hand, not a monster. And drawing hands gain enormous value, because a four-card straight draw in a 36-card deck is close to a coin flip rather than a long shot. Equities also run much closer together preflop, which is exactly why the format produces so many all-ins.
Antes, not blinds — and why the pot is big before the flop
Most short deck games ditch the traditional small-blind/big-blind structure, or supplement it heavily with antes. In the common setup every player at the table posts an ante and the button posts an extra one, which functions as the big blind. Nobody is getting a free look at the flop, and there is meaningful dead money in the middle from the first card.
That structure is deliberate. It pushes more hands to a flop, rewards aggression, and speeds the game up — the whole point of a variant designed by players who found regular Hold’em too slow.
Where Asian players actually find 6+ tables
Online, the two deepest pools sit on the GGNetwork. GGPoker runs six-max short deck cash games across three tiers — roughly $0.02/$0.05 with a $2 default buy-in at the bottom, $0.25/$0.50 with $20 in the middle, and $2/$5 with $200 at the high end — taking 5% rake with caps that vary by stake. Play-money tables exist if you want to learn the rankings without paying for the lesson. Natural8, the Asia-facing skin on the same network, lists Short Deck (6+) alongside Hold’em and PLO and runs a dedicated $10K daily short deck leaderboard on top of the cash games.
Traffic on both peaks in Asian evening hours, which is the opposite of most poker formats and a real edge if you are playing from Manila, Seoul, Taipei or Bangkok. Live, the format’s spiritual home is still the Macau high-stakes scene, and it remains a fixture on the Triton Poker Series schedule, where short deck events regularly out-draw the Hold’em ones.
Not sure which room has 6+ tables actually running at your hour? Message @PAGDaddyBot and we’ll tell you where the action is before you deposit anywhere.
What Hold’em players get wrong in their first session
Three errors account for most early losses. The first is overvaluing top pair and one-pair hands, which are close to worthless in a deck this dense. The second is folding drawing hands that are now priced in — open-ended draws are strong enough to play fast. The third is forgetting the A-6-7-8-9 straight, both when making it and when an opponent’s line suggests they have it.
If you want a sense of how a variant’s structure reshapes strategy before committing money, the same logic applies across formats — our breakdowns of PLO in Asia and GGPoker’s Rush & Cash cover the equivalent adjustments for four-card and fast-fold games.
Short deck poker FAQ
Why does a flush beat a full house in short deck?
Because the maths reverses. With sixteen cards removed there are fewer flush combinations available, while the denser deck makes it easier to pair the board and fill up. Flushes become the rarer hand, so they rank higher.
Does three of a kind beat a straight in short deck?
In the standard version used online and on the major live tours, no — a straight still beats trips. Some older private and club rulesets do flip it. Always confirm which set of rankings the table is using before your first hand.
What is the lowest straight in 6+ Hold’em?
A-6-7-8-9. The ace plays low in place of the five, exactly as it plays low in a normal wheel, then goes back to being the highest card everywhere else.
How many cards are in a short deck?
Thirty-six. All the twos, threes, fours and fives are removed, leaving sixes through aces in all four suits.
Can I play short deck poker from Asia for real money?
Yes. GGPoker and Natural8 both spread real-money 6+ cash games, and traffic is heaviest during Asian prime time. Whether you can deposit depends on your country’s rules rather than the format itself.
Is short deck more luck than regular Hold’em?
Preflop equities run closer together, so single hands are more of a coin flip and variance is higher. Over volume it is still a skill game — the edges just sit in different places, mainly in draw valuation and ante-aware aggression.
Do short deck games use blinds or antes?
Most use an ante-driven structure where everyone posts and the button posts an extra ante acting as the big blind. A few tables keep conventional blinds alongside antes, so check the table rules when you sit.