inspired by the card-playing thread...unusual poker variations

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

In the thread entitled “Does Anyone Play Cards Anymore” (sorry, I don’t know how to link), many people shared their experiences playing card games, including poker. This got me thinking about all of the unusual and sometimes strange variations my friends and I come up with after a few rounds. (We do play some more traditional variations too, of course.) Some rules variations are good, some bad, some ugly. Forgive me for re-listing the ones I’ve already done:

Chase the Bitch (queens wild, an upqueen ends the hand)
Communist Poker (all players must draw equally)
Bizarro poker (lowest hand wins)
Redneck poker (only red cards are worth anything)
Kangaroo straights (2-4-6-8-10, for ex., would count as a straight)
Turning the Corner (Q-K-A-2-3, for ex., would count as a straight)
Five Card Pass (regular Draw Poker, then you pass two of your cards to the player on your left)
Peter Piper Poker (to get a bonus card, you must recite a tongue-twister–only valid if everyone has been drinking)
Five Card Auction (Regular 5-card draw with 4 up-cards in the middle. Players, after drawing, auction to buy each card, putting the money in the pot.)
Then, of course, you can combine some of the above, e.g. “Redneck Communist Bizarro Poker.”

So, the next time we play, I’d like to have some really unusual ones to spring on the guys. They don’t have to be limited to games that actually exist, obviously, though those legitimate games might be a nice switch too.

Does anyone have any variations you like to play, or that you can invent?

2

Blackeye and Redeye (All black cards / all red cards are wild. If you get all red / all black, you lose)
Communal low-in-the-hole (everyone’s low card becomes wild for -everyone-) (AKA the crack-smoking game)

3

When we play night baseball, we have a “Marge Schott” rule–if the queen of spades appears, it’s a rainout and the cards and picked up and redealt. Pot stays as it was and is added to. We often have a rainout limit of one or two so the game won’t go on indefinitely.

4

Here is a somewhat complicated Variant taught to me by a Gentleman on the Greek Island of Skyros. It is particularly good for a country with low value currency, as it can quickly rack up the bets.

Poker variant: Merde

Each player pays for their hand as usual.

Deal face down five card hands to each player, and in the center of the table deal two rows of five cards also face down.

Starting on dealers left each player bets on the current contents of their hand. After the betting completes, anyone not in folds with their hand face down.

Now the first card of the first table row is turned up, this card acts as if it were a sixth card in each players hand. And each player bets on the best five card poker hand they can make. Round of betting occurs.

Next the second card of the first table row is upturned, this card acts as if it were a seventh card in each players hand. And each player bets on the best five card poker hand they can make. Round of betting occurs.

So on for the third,fourth,fifth card of the table row…

Next the Merde hits the fan, so to speak

The first card of the second table row (the merde row) is upturned. All players currently still in must immediately discard any card of the same face value as the upturned card, also any card from the first table row with the same face value is similarly discarded.
The discards are visible to all. Now there is another round of betting.

The second card of the second table row (the merde row) is upturned. All players currently still in must immediately discard any card of the same face value as the upturned card, also any card from the first table row with the same face value is similarly discarded.
The discards are visible to all. Now there is another round of betting.

And so on for the third,foueth, and fifth merde cards. Finally if the remaining players bet against each other in the normal way until they chose to fold or see each others hands. The final hands are made up of the best five (or less) card poker hand made from the players held hand and any remaining cards in the table’s first row.

I hope I have explained this sufficiently, please ask questions if this is not clear. I would also be keen to know if anyone has seen this variant before? I did a search for Poker Merde on Googol but could not find a reference to this variant.

5

www.homepoker.com has lots of variants, but I think some of the ingenuity of the posters here has gone beyond that site.

nineiron, in Communist Poker, how do you determine how many cards each player draws? The dealer decides? I was thinking that you could auction of the privilege of naming the number of cards drawn, but that wouldn’t be very communistic.

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2-5-7

Everyone antes. Deal everyone 2 cards, play 2 card poker, pairs win. Each player holds their cards in their hands, in a position to drop them on the table. Dealer says “3-2-1, Drop.” On the drop, those that drop are out for the remainder of that round. Those that hold flip the cards over. Best hand takes the pot. Losing hands pay back the amount of the pot (so if 3 hold/2 drop, each holder that lost would pay $5, resulting in a $10 pot.)

Each player is now alive for the next round. Deal 3 more cards. Each player now has 5. Playing the best 5 card stud hand. Same 3-2-1 Drop scenario. Same payment method, etc.

Deal 2 more cards. Everyone now has 7. Winner take all, losers pay again. At this point, if money is left in the pot, you start back over at 2 again. You play until the pot is cleaned out after a 7 card drop. Since pots could get really large in theory, we would do the following. Say $30 is in the pot. We would make the next round “win $20/pay $10” so that the winner would get $20 while the losers wouldn’t be completely broke. This helps keep the pot low but also encourages betting.

I could go on for hours with various games. Maybe I’ll throw out a few more over time but I don’t want to dominate the thread too much.

7

Mine’s somewhat tame and boring compared to the stuff posted here, but my friends and I play Killer Queen, which is seven card stud with one or more wild cards (it’s often more fun if you play Killer Queen with two or three wild cards). If at any point during the dealing, a queen is dealt (face up), all wild cards become null and void. This becomes interesting when someone is sitting on a couple of wild cards, and has been betting as such, then on the last up-card a queen rears her ugly head.

Much cursing and gnashing of teeth ensues.
Happy

8

Time is short for me at the moment, but here’s one that may have come from the homepoker web site: Royal Chicago. Some nice pots rung up on this one.

Dealt as seven-card stud, no wilds. In order to win the pot, one must have the best hand and either the highest or the lowest spade in the hole (as a down card). If no one meets these criteria, the pot remains and a new hand is dealt; it is up to the dealer whether or not to re-ante on new hands. If anyone folds, they’re out until someone wins.

9

This thread would not be complete without “INDIAN” (I guess if I were politically correct, it would be called “native” American).

Each player is dealt one card, and puts it face out against his/her forehead. You see everyone elses card but do not see your own. It is played once and only once in my poker games and only after massive quantities of alcohol have been consumed.

10

“Indian,” in our group, is “Polish Poker.” (Most of us are Polish in background, so lay off.) It’s a good beer-fueled game; you’re right. We’ve done 2-card and 3-card Polish Poker too.

TaxGuy, we usually just have the dealer name the number of cards to be drawn (beforehand, of course), but your way might be interesting to try.

Bippy, we play a variation of your “Merde” called, fittingly, “Oh Shit.”

Another fun one you might try on your next poker night is gin. Same rules as regular gin, but we pay 3 cents to draw the down card, or 5 cents for the up card. (Like I said, we have a very small-stakes game.) When someone knocks, everyone gets one more turn. The player “stuck” with the least points wins the pot (can get pretty large). All other players put in the number of points they are stuck with, in cents value. So you can knock early and try to catch everyone with lots of points, or you can hold out and try to get stuck with few or none.

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Day baseball.
Night baseball.

It’s late – I can’t even remember the difference between the 9-card deals.

12

Pass the trash

Each player has 3 one dollar bills sitting in front of them. Deal one card to each player. The object is to not have the lowest card at the end of each round. King is high, ace is low.

Start with the player to the right of the dealer. He can choose to keep his card or pass it to the player to his right. Once he makes his move, the player to the right does the same. Go around the table until the dealer has the choice. He can either keep the card now in his possession or replace it with the top card on the deck. Everyone flips their cards over. Lowest card puts one of the dollars in the pot. In the case of a tie for low, all tied lows pay a dollar. Continue until only one person has money left in front of them. Once you lose all 3 dollars, you are out of the game. Each round, the deal rotates one person to the right so each player has the same advantage/disadvantage of location.

The one minor catch. Kings can’t be traded. Obviously, if dealt a king you would choose to keep it. If dealt a king and the player to your left wants to trade, you flip it over and he is stuck with his card, which obviously lets everyone know he is in trouble.

General strategy: Trade if you have anything Ace through 5. If someone makes a trade with you and you end up knowing you have a higher card, stay put after the trade. The rest of the table now knows the other guy has a horrible card.

13

Question about Communist poker: Who decides how many must be drawn? Is there a dictator? an average? Sounds like it might be interesting.
-PSM