A few weeks ago, I wrote an introductory article about Open Face Chinese Poker (OFC). Since then, I’ve been playing pretty much non-stop and from what I can tell from Twitter, I am hardly alone. Every day, I see Tweets about OFC from elite poker players like Shaun Deeb, Vanessa Selbst, and Phil Hellmuth, just to name a few. Some are playing the game on an OFC App that was created.

The action is hardly restricted to the world’s most famous poker pros; I was at a local game in Atlanta this week and nearly everyone there had played OFC and was interested in talking about it or getting a game going.

One fun twist to the strategy that’s now a part of many games is Fantasyland. Just like the game itself, there are a number of different ways this can be played. The current standard seems to be that you go to Fantasyland if you properly complete a hand (no fouling) with at least a pair of queens up front.

Fantasyland is significant because if you get there, you get an enormous advantage the following hand. In the next hand, a player in Fantasyland gets all of their cards face down and doesn’t have to set their hand until everyone else has finished. It’s a massive advantage and often leads to huge royalties.

Check out the Fantasyland thread in the forums for some pictures of recent hands that got there, and feel free to post your own.

I got to talk with Chris Moorman (pictured) about OFC recently and just like so many others, he has caught the bug. While he didn’t play in the $2,000 OFC tournament at the PCA, he has been playing on the side with friends. As suspected, he hadn’t heard about anyone who has been a consistent winner to this point. When I asked him about known winners, he responded, “There aren’t any that I know of, although there definitely is a real skill to it. There are a lot of math-based problems involved, unlike regular Chinese.”

Moorman has only been playing low stakes to this point; his biggest swing was winning $500 off Jake Cody while they were on a train together. He had been down 40 points, but then went on a big upswing after getting into Fantasyland. Despite this win, Moorman claims he has had more losing sessions than winning ones to this point, and that’s why he has been keeping his stakes moderate.

I’m having a blast with OFC and hope to get even more discussion going about it here on PocketFives as we learn more about the game. I’ve already gotten several friends hooked on it and we have only reached the tip of the iceberg. Like many of my friends, I hope and expect to play this game for real money online some day. Until then, let’s keep the game going at our casinos and home games, and on the mobile app!

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