Already answered, but my point goes beyond the last decade or so’s exclusionary fascination with THE - it’s as if the public lost interest in all forms of basketball but half-court one on one - and into the endless ranks of silly - IMVHO - variant games.
If poker is lightweight entertainment, fine, watch the simplified speed version on TV. Or play versions with absurd numbers of rules that nuke the notion of odds and hand values. Let each dealer make up new rules. Fine.
But I’ll sit out until a table forms that thinks 5CS, 7CS, 5CD and maybe Shotgun is plenty of variation for a group of players that appreciate poker as a game of skill.
I’m resigned to sitting out for the rest of my life at this point, but if bourbon suddenly disappeared from the shelves, I wouldn’t drink Slow Comfortable Screw Up Against the Walls, either.
I am just boggled that a 2013 discussion of fictional poker even knows that the traditional forms are.
Exactly. I suspect most poker players don’t really understand that wild cards - especially a plethora of them, such as in Baseball - completely change the odds and hand valuation. When you get to oddities like Royal Poker (face and ten cards only), a straight is barely worth opening on.
Granted, half the sixty-plus events at the WSOP involve HE (including the Main Event obviously) there are still plenty of events featuring most of the other forms: Stud, Draw, Omaha, Razz, Chinese Poker, etc.
I think the variant Data would have really crushed at would’ve been Stud Hi/Lo 8 or better. Though it’d certainly be easier for Data to construct good equities vs proposed ranges in Omaha than it would be for the rest of us. I can barely figure out the syntax when someone lists their search in something like Pro Poker Tools, much less how to use the thing.
Troi might’ve won OTOH if it included a declare. Pity that the WSOP doesn’t include a game with that option in it. One of the Super/System books has a chapter written by David Sklansky where he goes through the psychology in playing a variant with a declare. I had no idea it could be so complicated until I had read it.
LAFORGE: No question about it. She was bluffing, Worf.
WORF: Bluffing is not one of Counsellor Troi’s strong suits.
LAFORGE: I’m still reading some chlorinide leakage, but I can’t pin it down.
LAFORGE: Maybe up here. (Geordi goes up a ladder to scan some barrels on a shelf)
WORF: It would have been unwise to call. Yes. My hand was not strong enough.
LAFORGE: You had jacks and eights, she bluffed you with a pair of sixes.
WORF: How did you know what I had?
LAFORGE: Let’s just say I had a special insight into the cards. Maybe next time you should bring a deck that’s not transparent to infrared light. Not to worry, Worf. I only peek after the hand is over. Still nothing. I’ll get a dynoscan. We’ll try again.
(Ethics 5x16)