It was another down week for online poker traffic, as online poker rooms saw 2% fewer cash game players last week than they did the week before according to the traffic monitoring site PokerScout. As usual, PokerStarsruled the roost with a seven-day average of 23,600 cash game players. PartyPoker, the iPoker Network, and Full Tilt Poker followed behind, all with not even one-tenth the players of PokerStars.

Besides the usual wonders of poker, one development that has made the games more interesting in recent weeks is the debut of several new variants at sister sites Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars. On Full Tilt’s side, Irish Poker and Five Card Stud were launched a couple of weeks ago, while PokerStars introduced Five Card Omaha and Courchevel just last week.

Irish Poker, a Texas Hold’em variant, has been a hit, attracting 3.9% of Full Tilt’s traffic at its peak last Wednesday according to PokerScout. It is now down to a bit under 3%. Irish Poker is a game for those who like action and a little more decision-making. In the game, each player is dealt four hole cards instead of the customary two. Play then proceeds just like in Hold’em, except that those who want to see the turn must discard two hole cards after the flop round of betting.

PokerScout has not published traffic figures for Five Card Stud, which likely indicates that it is not drawing a significant number of players. That would not be unexpected, as even though it is new to Full Tilt’s lineup, it is not a fresh game to most players and has not been popular in years. Five Card Stud is similar to Seven Card Stud, just with fewer face-down cards. In the game, players are dealt one hole card face down and one face up. Throughout the course of the hand, players who remain in the game are dealt three more up cards, one per betting round. The best hand using all five cards wins.

On PokerStars, both new Omaha variants have not done as well proportionately as those on Full Tilt. Combined, Five Card Omaha and Courchevel made up 1.3% of PokerStars’ cash game traffic. As PokerScout points out, though, since PokerStars is so much bigger than Full Tilt, the new games are fielding many more players on an absolute scale.

For those unfamiliar, Five Card Omaha is exactly the same as standard Omaha aside from one key difference, which may be obvious based on the name. Instead of being dealt four hole cards, each player is dealt five. The rest is the same: players must use exactly two hole cards and three community cards to form the best five-card hand.

Courchevel (pictured) could be called Five Card Split Flop Omaha. It plays like Five Card Omaha, except in this case, the first flop card is dealt at the beginning of the hand before the pre-flop betting round. After the pre-flop bets are made, the hand proceeds as usual, starting with the remaining two flop cards.

Now all we need is for one of the big poker rooms to bring back Pineapple and Crazy Pineapple, or maybe Open Face Chinese.

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