Is variety the spice of life for you as a card player? If you get easily bored of playing the same card game, you’ll be pleased to hear there is a new poker variant in town that will change your perspective on the classic game of Texas Hold’em. The world’s leading online poker room, PokerStars, has launched a new brand of poker called Unfold Hold’em, designed to keep every hand interesting.

If you’ve played Texas Hold’em before, the chances are you’ll pick up Unfold Hold’em very quickly. The game is based on Texas Hold’em with one unique twist: an additional side pot allows those who fold their hand pre-flop to ‘unfold’ their hand, giving you another chance to win. Put simply, if you get fed up with having to fold bad hands all of the time, only to watch the flop play out in your favor, Unfold Hold’em gives you an opportunity to reactivate your hand in the game to play for the extra side pot.

On the face of it, Unfold Hold’em looks like a great starting point for beginner poker players and casual players that don’t have the time to sit and wait 30 minutes for a killer hand. It gives players a chance to re-enter a hand that looked weak pre-flop and still attempt to maximize their profits as the hand unfolds. The very nature of this game variant means that players will play significantly more hands per hour, allowing beginners and casual players to get a firm handle on the dynamics of Texas Hold’em.

At present, Unfold Hold’em is only available to those who wish to play at the 6-max No Limit cash game tables rather than sit-and-go (SNG) or multi-table tournaments. In fact, it’s hard to imagine the dynamics of Unfold Hold’em even working in a tournament format. You can take a seat at an Unfold Hold’em table just like any other cash game table: select the table stakes you wish to play and the PokerStars client software will find an available seat. If there aren’t any available seats, you’ll be placed on a table’s waiting list.

At the beginning of every hand at an Unfold Hold’em table, all players are required to pay an ‘Unfold ante’, which forms the side pot that players who unfold their hand on the flop can play for. The hand then plays out just like a normal Texas Hold’em game, with all players asked to either fold, call or raise with their hand. Once the flop is dealt, any player wishing to ‘unfold’ their hand must pay the ‘unfold bet’, which is the current size of the side pot.

All those players that unfold their hand cannot place any further bets throughout the remainder of the hand. Unfolded players simply sit back and spectate the rest of the hand, with all the players involved in the main pot battling it out for supremacy. The Unfold side pot is then given to the unfolded player with the best five-card hand after the final card (the river) has been dealt. If the main pot is taken by a player before the river card is dealt, the remaining community cards will be dealt solely for the purposes of determining the winner of the Unfold side pot.

Is there a possibility that Unfold Hold’em becomes a household poker variant online and offline? You never know. PokerStars are certainly trying hard to innovate and have been testing the water with a string of variant ideas, most notably Split Hold’em. This game featured two sets of community cards, with two flops, turns and rivers and two halves of the pot to win. Players at showdown were required to have the best hand on both community boards to take both pots. Nevertheless, Split Hold’em was short-lived and disappeared pretty quickly from the PokerStars portfolio. One thing’s for certain, Unfold Hold’em will provide high-octane, all-action poker that will appeal to the casual players as much as Big Win Poker, even if the mainstream masses don’t buy into it.