Five beginner mistakes in Patch-Patch

Patch-Patch is quick to learn and has a few traps that catch nearly everyone in their first sessions. None of them is about bad luck; each one is a habit carried over from Hold'em, or a misunderstanding of how three boards share one pot. Here are the five that cost the most, with the fix for each.

1. Counting one card, or three, from your hand

Each of your hands plays its board by the Omaha rule: exactly two of its four cards and exactly three from the board. Players coming from Hold'em see four spades on a board, look at the ace of spades in their hand and think "nut flush". It isn't a flush at all.

The same goes for straights that would need three of your cards, and for full houses on a paired board that would need four board cards. The fix: for every hand, name the two cards you are using. If you can't name two, you don't have the hand. The table helps: the line under each of your hands says what it really makes. The hand rankings page has more of these traps.

2. Stacking one suit in one hand

With twelve cards you often hold four or five of a suit, and it's tempting to put them all next to the board that shows two of that suit. But only two cards of a hand can play, so a hand like this one plays exactly like one with just two hearts:

The 7 and the 3 of hearts are not useless cards. On another board they might pair the board or join a straight draw. The fix: two cards of a suit per hand, and send the extras where they do a job.

3. One monster and two empty boards

The pot is split into three. A hand that wins one board, however beautifully, takes a third of the pot. Look at this river, heads-up:

You made four of a kind, the best hand of the night, and still lost chips: you put 300 in and got 200 back. Your opponent's ordinary two pairs won the other two boards. Heads-up, winning one board always loses a third of what you put in.

The fix: when you split, give every board a real chance, even if that means a slightly weaker best hand. Two good boards win chips; one great board doesn't. Scoop or split has the numbers.

4. Calling pot bets with one good board

Every bet in Patch-Patch is the size of the pot, so a call always costs you one unit for a share of a pot of three. Heads-up, that makes the break-even point easy to remember: call when you expect to win more than one board on average from here.

A hand that is strong on one board and weak on the other two is worth about one board at best, and less if the strong board can still be beaten. That is a fold against a pot bet more often than it feels. Beginners call with "my flush is good" and lose the other two boards, and the third of the pot the flush wins doesn't cover the call.

The fix: before calling, count boards: how many do I expect to win? Over one, call; around one, lean towards folding unless the strong board is a lock; under one, fold. Three-handed, when all three players have put in the same, one board already gets your chips back, so the bar is lower there.

5. Letting the clock decide

Patch-Patch has two clocks. The decision clock gives you 37.5 seconds at slow tables, 25 at mid and 12 at fast; when it runs out, the game checks for you if it can and folds otherwise, and you sit out from the next hand. The arrangement clock gives you 3 minutes at slow tables, 2 at mid and 100 seconds at fast; when it runs out, your cards are sent as they are on your screen.

New players lose hands to both: a timeout fold with a good hand, or an arrangement left half done because the first board took all the time. The fix: arrange in order of importance. Lock in your strongest made hand first, then give each other board its two best cards, and tap I'm Ready as soon as the split is sound: there is no prize for using the whole clock. If you need a break, use Sit out next hand rather than letting the timer sit you out.

Practise without risk

All of Patch-Patch is play chips, so a lost hand costs nothing but chips that can't be bought anyway. The best way past these five mistakes is to play hands: start at the slow 5-10 tables, where every clock is longest, or take the two-minute tour, which walks through a whole hand, the arrangement and the "exactly two" rule included. When you're ready for the details, the Patch-Patch rules cover everything.