How to Approach the €555 PL Sviten Championship at Kings of Tallinn

For this author, no game on the Kings of Tallinn schedule is quite like Sviten Special. It is chaotic in the best way: every player holds five cards, everyone can change all of them after the flop, and the pot splits at showdown. Hands you have never thought about before suddenly matter, and hands you thought were monsters turn out to be traps. If you’ve wanted to try something different, or you have played a little Sviten but never really understood what you were doing, Event #50 at the Kings of Tallinn Autumn Edition, powered by OlyBet Poker, at Olympic Park Casino and the Hilton Tallinn Park is the place to do it. Here is what you need to know.

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A Game Born in Stockholm

Sviten Special was invented in 2004 at Anders Bengtsson’s Sviten club in Stockholm. It gradually spread to Scandinavian home games and festival schedules, and Kings of Tallinn Tournament Director Teresa Nousiainen and OlyBet Poker notably pushed hard for years to get it in front of international fields. It now appears at Kings of Tallinn, WSOP Circuit Tallinn, The Battle of Malta, the partypoker Tour, The Festival Series and the Irish Open, which introduced it for the first time in 2026.

Players outside the Nordics may know the same concept under a different name: Drawmaha, with some poker media incorrectly using both names interchangeably. The core game is identical, with one practical difference: Drawmaha tables skip the one-open rule, a signature Sviten feature that changes how information moves at the table. Always confirm the house rules before sitting down.

An identical game called Celestial Poker was also played in French Canada in the 1980s, predating Bengtsson’s Stockholm club, though Sviten is the version that made it onto the international poker festival circuit.

What Is Sviten Special?

The rules combine five-card draw with Omaha hold’em, and the pot splits down every hand, with scoops and uncontested pots trumping all. Here is how the action runs:

• Each player is dealt five face-down hole cards.
• There is a betting round, then a flop of three community cards.
• A second betting round occurs, then each player draws 0 to 5 new cards to replace any they discard. The turn card is dealt immediately after the draw, with no betting round in between.
• A third betting round follows, then the river, then a final betting round and showdown.

At showdown, half the pot goes to the best five-card draw hand made from your five hole cards alone, and the other half goes to the best Omaha hand using exactly two hole cards plus exactly three community cards. Both halves go to the high hand. There is no low qualifier and no eight-or-better rule. This is not a hi-lo game.

The Draw, the One-Open Rule, and Position

The draw is what sets Sviten apart from every other game on the schedule. After the flop betting round, each player discards any cards they want and receives replacements. You can draw 0 to 5 cards, or stand pat if you like what you have. The turn card comes immediately after the draw, so you pick up new cards with three community cards already on the board, shaping what you are drawing toward.

Draw counts happen in betting order, which means the button declares last. You see how many cards each opponent takes before you decide yours. That is a real and significant edge, and one of the reasons position matters so much in Sviten.

The one-open rule adds another layer. Draw exactly one card, and your replacement comes face up for the whole table to see. You can take it, or reject it and receive the next card face down, blind. Drawing two or more always gets face-down replacements.

Both actions leak information, and both can be used to represent. The game’s inventor specifically flagged the one-open rule as a bluffing tool: draw one, take a visibly useless card, then bet the turn as if you improved. Your opponents saw a blank and read you as giving up. The flip side is that rejecting a card that would clearly help you says you were drawing to something very specific. Experienced players track every take and reject at the table. Almost nobody in a typical festival field does. Start from hand one.

The Rule That Changes How You Value Hands

Most of the field will walk in treating Sviten as a split version of PLO, valuing hands by how they connect with the board. That is the single biggest mistake you can make.

The draw half is awarded every single hand, with no qualifier. That means your five-card draw hand has to compete for its share of every pot you enter. Flop equity on the Omaha side is also far less predictive than it looks, because every player at the table can replace all five cards after the flop. Simulation testing of six-handed Sviten found that the best Omaha hand on the flop still wins the Omaha half only 30% of the time. Compare that to regular PLO, where your equity is largely fixed once the flop comes out.

The inventor’s own rule, repeated by every serious source on the game: value your hand by its five-card draw strength. The Omaha half is your upside. The draw half is where you anchor your decisions. A strong five-card draw hand, combined with the positional leverage of acting last on the draw, is where genuine edges in this game are built.

Made hands lead the way: straights, flushes, and full houses in your hole cards lock the draw half and give you something to work with on the board. The best two-way holding is high two pair, double-suited with a connecting card: something like ace-ace-king-king-queen, with two suits represented, gives you a strong draw hand and the richest set of Omaha combinations. Be wary of hands that fool PLO players: one-way Omaha hands that play only for the board side, trips that look strong but rank below every made straight, and quads, which lock the draw half but leave almost no Omaha combinations because four of five cards share a rank.

The Leak That Ends Tournaments

Calling the turn with only a draw to win half the pot. That is where stacks disappear in Sviten. The split structure makes every individual call feel cheap, and players talk themselves into it in a way they never would in a single-pot game. If you are drawing with no realistic chance of winning the draw half, you’re getting at best half the pot while paying full price to get there.

The broader version of the same mistake is playing for only one half of the pot throughout a hand. Sviten has no qualifier and no rescue. If you cannot win the draw half, you cannot scoop, and chasing the Omaha half in a multiway pot is where the slow bleed starts.

How the Field Plays, and Where the Edge Is

The Kings of Tallinn Sviten Championship will have two recognizable player types. The PLO specialist who focuses on board connectivity and loses pots to players with stronger draw hands. And the draw specialist who plays the five-card side well but underplays their Omaha holdings. Both are exploitable. Identify which type you are up against in the first few orbits, and it stays stable.

Against a player overweighting their Omaha hand, value your draw half harder and let them invest in a pot they cannot scoop. Against a player focused purely on the draw, punish their board blindness on later streets when you have genuine two-way equity.

Tight-aggressive is the correct approach for this event. Pot-limit Sviten creates real variance from the split structure, so play better hands rather than more of them. Open with a raise or fold. Avoid small and middle two pair in multiway pots without a coordinating card. Avoid one-way hands. The field who buys in without preparation will see every flop and lose chips steadily. You want to be on the other side of that.

Event #50: €555 PL Sviten Championship Details

Day 1 fires on Friday, October 16 at 16:30 at the 2026 Kings of Tallinn Autumn Edition. Players start with 30,000 chips. Late registration runs for 10 levels with 20-minute blinds and closes at approximately 20:30 on Friday. After late registration closes, levels move to 30 minutes. Day 1 ends when the field is reduced to 13%, placing every survivor in the money. The Final Day begins Saturday, October 17 at 12:00.

Players looking to satellite in can fire Event #48, the €50 PLO5 Satellite to the €555 Sviten Championship, on Friday, October 16 at 12:30. That satellite guarantees five seats and gives a direct path in for €50.

The full schedule for the Kings of Tallinn Autumn Edition 2026, including every event, buy-in and starting time, is available at OlyBet Events.

• Article originally produced at poker.pro.