How to Play Pot Limit Sviten Special (Drawmaha)
This is My Game!
The fourth game on the rotation of mixed poker games that will soon be offered at Portomaso Casino, Malta on Thursday nights every week is Pot Limit Special, also known as Drawmaha. This is my favourite poker game, and it combines five card Pot Limit Omaha with Five Card Draw - the latter game being often featured in old Western movies. The two games individually have appeal of their own, but combining the two is genius!
Let’s look at a few things that No Limit Hold Em players will need to get used to when sitting to play Pot Limit Sviten Special for the first time:
Players are dealt five cards
Pot Limit betting - familiar to players of Pot Limit Omaha
Sviten Special is a split pot game. Unlike more familiar split pot games, the two pots that players compete for are both won by high poker hands - this is not a hilo game.
There is one chance to change cards - the draw occurs after the flop bet and players can choose to keep all the cards they already have (known as “standing pat”) or to change any number of the five cards they hold.
If a player chooses to change one card, the dealer will be offered one card open for all to see. If the player wants to keep the card they pick it up and put it with the other cards in their hand. Otherwise, they decline the card and the dealer will take it back and put it with the cards in the muck and give the player the next card off the top of the deck face down. THIS RULE IS GENIUS!
These are the best places to learn how to play this game:
My book! Pot Limit Sviten Special is an e-book available on Amazon and takes you through the basics of how to play, gives an understanding of the strength of various starting hands and some solid advice of how to proceed through the various betting rounds and, importantly, the draw. It also includes a section where you can test yourself!
Here is the episode of Poker: All The Games about the game.
This is a tutorial video with Peter La Terra, one of the best players of this game in the world. The video contains some example hands and they illustrate the game very well