Short Deck overview
Short Deck (also called 6+ Hold'em) runs on the same no-limit Texas Hold'em rules you already know, except every 2, 3, 4, and 5 is stripped out of the deck. With fewer cards in play, hands connect more often, equities run closer, and every decision carries more weight. Because the deck is down to just 36 cards, the hand rankings shift: in Short Deck, a flush beats a full house.
In Short Deck, a flush ranks above a full house.
The Ace still plays as the highest card and also as the lowest when you complete a straight. That means the lowest possible straight runs from the Ace to the nine (A-6-7-8-9).
Once you've got that key difference from standard Texas Hold'em down, learning to play Short Deck is straightforward. If you want to brush up on the fundamentals first, check out our complete Texas Hold'em guide for beginners.
Short Deck rules
Just like standard Texas Hold'em, Short Deck has four betting rounds. Each player uses their two hole cards together with the five community cards to make the best possible five-card hand.
First betting round (pre-flop)
In Short Deck, instead of a small blind and big blind, every player typically posts an ante, and the player on the button posts a second ante (effectively the largest forced bet). The action opens with the player to the left of the button and moves clockwise. On their turn, each player decides whether to call (match the previous bet), raise, or fold (muck the cards and wait for the next hand).
Once everyone has acted, if more than one player remains in the hand, the flop is dealt: three community cards face up on the table.
Second betting round
The first active player to the left of the button opens the action. Each player can check (pass the action along without betting), bet, raise the previous bet, or fold. Next comes the turn, the fourth community card. If everyone checks, the turn is dealt for free, with no bets going in.
Third betting round
The players still in the hand act again, one at a time. If more than one player is still contesting the pot at the end of this round, the river is dealt.
Fourth betting round
With all five community cards on the table, the final betting round takes place. If more than one player makes it to the end, the hole cards are turned up (the showdown) and the best hand wins the pot.
Hand rankings
Short Deck hand strength, from highest to lowest:
Royal Flush
A run of the same suit from ten to Ace.
Straight Flush
Five cards in sequence, all of the same suit.
Four of a Kind
Four cards of the same rank.
Flush
Five cards of the same suit.
Full House
Three of a kind plus a pair.
Straight
Five cards in sequence.
Three of a Kind
Three cards of the same rank.
Two Pair
Two separate pairs, each made of two cards of the same rank.
One Pair
Two cards of the same rank.
High Card
Five cards that don't make any combination.
Short Deck odds
With the sixteen lowest cards (the 2s through the 5s) removed, the odds of being dealt each type of starting hand change a lot. The number of possible starting hands drops by almost half: counting suits, there are 630 different combinations; ignoring suits, there are 81. You lose four possible pairs, so now there are nine pocket pairs, and the chance of being dealt any one of them (including pocket Aces) sits around 1%. In full-deck Texas Hold'em, that frequency is almost double.
Because there are fewer cards, completing straights gets easier while completing flushes gets harder. With connected cards, you flop straight draws more often, and an open-ended straight draw has 8 outs out of 31 (the cards left in the deck) instead of 8 out of 47. That's why the classic "rule of 2 and 4" from the full-deck game doesn't hold up here: your chance of improving on the turn is roughly three times higher, and across turn and river combined it's roughly six times higher. In other words, an open-ended straight draw after the flop has about a 48% chance (eight outs x 6) of completing by the river.
In Short Deck, even though you're more likely to be dealt pocket Aces, their overall chance of beating other hands goes down. They also win less often against smaller pairs than the board cards: the smallest pair (a pair of sixes), all-in pre-flop against pocket Aces, has roughly a one-in-four chance of winning in Short Deck. In the same way, the gap between high cards and pairs evens out, and a clash like A-K against 10-J runs close to 50/50.
Short Deck strategy for beginners
Beyond the absolute basics (a flush beats a full house, and the lowest straight runs Ace to nine), playing Short Deck means recalibrating how you read the strength of starting hands and draws. Pairs are still strong, but pairs that look premium in standard Texas Hold'em (pocket Jacks, pocket Tens) lose much of their edge. Small pairs can get you in trouble: cards bigger than the board are more likely to improve, and the same goes for straight draws. Pairs also show up more often: your chance of pairing up with the community cards is about one in five (in standard Texas Hold'em, it's about one in eight).
If you're coming over from a tighter game, the usual advice is to start out cautious, even when your hand is above average. The chance that you (or your opponent) hit an expensive nut hand is higher too. Even so, the mechanics of the game stay the same, and a solid grasp of position and squeezing maximum value from your hands works in your favor. On the button, more hands become playable; defending the big blind (most Short Deck tables are short-handed) and avoiding passive play both help you transition smoothly from standard Texas Hold'em.
Middle connectors (like 9-10 or 10-J) pick up far more value than in the full-deck game: those hands flop an open-ended straight draw close to one in five times. At the same time, hitting top pair on the flop (or reaching showdown with only a pair lower than the board) is weaker in Short Deck, and if you don't improve by the river, especially against multiple opponents, you're often beat.
Finally, even though the flush ranks higher in this game, each suit has fewer cards. If a flush draw appears on the flop, the chance of completing it by the river is around 30%. That's why playing higher, connected, suited cards, combined with the many draws the flop can offer, tends to be more profitable than playing low, disconnected suited cards. Other players will fire on the flop often, chasing stronger draws, so showdown hands tend to be bigger than in a full-deck game.
Where to play Short Deck
As soon as it appeared, Short Deck took the high-roller tournament world by storm: with fewer cards, players make bigger hands and the pace of the game gets faster and more exciting. It quickly spread to cash games and festivals around the world. In 2019, the WSOP added a Short Deck bracelet event with a $10,000 buy-in for the first time, and today 6+ Hold'em is common in both cash games and tournaments, online and live.
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Short Deck, also known as Six Plus Hold'em or short-deck poker, is an innovative spin on standard Texas Hold'em. In Short Deck, every card from 2 to 5 is removed from the deck, which then holds 36 cards instead of 52. Because of that smaller number of cards, hand strength is adjusted in this game.
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