My Poker gang is bored, we need new games!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

Dots. A blind, roll em game. Deal seven cards down. All you count are the number of “dots” clubs, hearts, diamonds, or spades, in the center row. For example, a 4 or a face card is 0, an ace or a 5 is 1, and a 3 is 3. You keep flipping until you beat the hand to your right. Then bet. Veryy stupid, not related to poker.

Screw guts. A pot game. This was our game in high school. Deal 3 cards, 2 down and one up. High card showing is screwed, must stay in. If you get screwed, next time you are dealt all 3 down. Good idea to set a maximum burn.

Between the sheets. This was our boy scouts game. Another pot game. Go around the table flipping over 2 cards, and the player says how much he wants to bet the next card will be between them. Can call 1st ace high or low.

Man, I got a million of them. These are just some of the more stupid.

22

High-low twist. My favorite game…

It’s five card stud (one down, four up). The lowest hand wins; in this case, aces are low. The perfect hand is A-2-3-4-6 (A-2-3-4-5 is a straight).

To start: deal one hole, one up. Lowest hand showing bets first. Bet after each round until four cards are showing.

Now the beauty part: each player, in turn, can trade in a card for some amount of money (we liked to make it hurt, so twice the max bet). The kicker: the person with the lowest hand showing trades first. The beauty of that is that they might have a reasonable hand and want to stay pat, but the next person might trade for a better hand. It’s maddening, and great fun to watch.

After the trade, there is a final bet.

Incidentally, aces are low, but a pair of them is high. So if you have two aces, you’d lose to someone with two kings. That probably won’t ever happen though. The trick to this game is to not go for the worst hand, but the best low hand. Once you see the difference, you’ll see how wonderful his game is.

Of course, playing this is illegal in most states. But that’s another thread…

23

Change it is easy. 7 Card Stud, 2 down, 4 up and YOUR option on the last card, wether up or down. But the difference is this:

After the initial deal of 2 down and 1 up, you deal a card up into the center of the table. That card is used as part of your hand, and it along with any that match it are wild cards. Bet, then deal the second round of face-ups. If anyone matches showing (i.e. pair, three-of-a-kind, etc.) you deal another card to the center, which then becomes the wild card. The option on the last makes this interesting, because those players who have a wild card in their hand will take the last card down, so as to not pair up and change the wild card. Those without will take it up, TRYING to change it. HUUUUGE pots and a lot of cursing normally accompany this game!

O

Vidi Vici Veni!

24

If you’re going to play all of these wacky games, make sure you don’t invite any serious poker players over, or they’ll eat your lunch. Most of the ‘fun’ poker games have some serious strategic holes in them. There’s a reason why casino poker has standardized on stud and Hold’em - they are the games that strike a good strategic balance that makes it more difficult to attain an edge over your opponents without real skill. That’s why you never see really good players playing games with lots of wildcards, or strange betting systems. In games like that, the ‘edge’ on each round will be so lopsided that the game eventually becomes just a wash and boring for all involved. It would be like if you played Hold’em without the button moving - the dealer has such a huge edge over everyone else that if he gets to stay dealer all night and knows what he’s doing, everyone else would go broke.

My favorite poker game is Omaha High, which is also found in Casinos. It’s played like Hold’em, except every player is dealt four cards instead of two. You MUST use two cards from your hand and three from the board to make a hand - you can’t use one or three cards from your hand. The worst hand you can get dealt in Omaha is 4 deuces - Since you can only use two of them, the best hand you can possibly make is a full house if there are three of a kind on the board, but then anyone with a bigger pair in their hand or the 4th card of the trips beats you.

Omaha Hi-Lo is also very popular nowadays, but the rules are kind of tough to explain. Seven-card stud Hi-Lo is excellent, but is also difficult to explain.

25

I am almost positive I’m goofing up (or mixing up) the names of these poker variants, but here goes:

Canadian 5-card draw: Same as regular 5-card draw, except in between “pair” and “two pair”, put “4-card straight”. Makes more people stay in during draw games, for bigger pots. (Someone told me that that’s exactly where “4-card straight” belongs, according to probability, but I never bothered to check.)

Kankakee Stud: 7-card stud variant. First up card is your own personal wild card. If 2 is your first up card, then all twos are wild for you. Lets people who like playing with wild cards happy, but doesn’t upset the “no wild cards” contingent too much because EVERYONE has at least one wild card.

English Stud: 7-card stud variant. After 5 cards have been dealt, there is a chance to change cards. If you change a down card, you get a down card. If you change an up card, you get an up card. Same thing applies to the last card dealt, down for down, up for up.

English Stud is my fave. Not too crazy, but seeing all the up cards being traded adds another dimension to 7-stud.

26

Here are a couple I like:

Take it or Leave it–Seven card stud, face up cards are dealt one at a time; each player has an option when dealt an up card (or has an up card passed to him)–either keep it, or pass it to the person on your left and get a new card (dealer can burn the card to get a new card). Actually, we usually play a variation, where each time someone is dealt an up card, he can pass any one of his up cards to the player on his left, and get a new card. We often play this in conjuction with low hole card wild.

Two Out of Three–Seven card stud. To win the pot, a player must win two of the following three:

  1. High hand
  2. Highest spade in the hole
  3. Lowest spade in the hole

If no one wins, re-ante, redeal, and keep building the pot.

27

I do not follow this at all. Could someone try to help me here? Sounds like it might be interesting…

28

Fuck Your Neighbor

Basically its played like this. Really simple. Suppose there are 5 players at a table, one player deals one card to each player. The first person left of the dealer looks at his card. If its a high card he keeps it, if its a low card he passes it to the second player to the left or dealer and switches for that player’s card, he’s stuck with it. The second plater to the left then repeats the process. The catch is if you get passed a 2, and then try to pass it on and the player to your left has a King, you can;t pass and are stuck with that 2. All this only goes once around and the player who ends up with the highest card wins.

So, suppose player 1 is dealt an Ace, he’ll keep it and at least draw the hand since no one can force him to swap. If player 2 is dealt an Ace and player one is dealt a 3, he can switch with player 2 and will probably win the game. The challenge is that you have no idea what you’re getting or giving up. Do you keep a Jack that probably won’t win, but by passing it you’ll probably get a even lower hand.

You’d think that a 2 would alays end up at the dealer, but not necessarily because if player 1 gets a 2, he will pass it left, so will the next guy, and the next guy, but player 4 has a King…doh! Player 3 is stuck with it.

Make sense? See it played once and you’ll never forget it, its so simple.

29

I play a really fun game called scat.
[ul]
[li]The dealer gives everybody three cards, then flips over the first card on the deck.[/li][li]The person to the left of the dealer goes first.[/li][li]object of the game is to get the closest to 31 as possible. Card values as follows:[/li] 1-10-face value
Jack, Queen, King-ten points
Ace-eleven points
BUT, to score any points, the cards that you think are the best HAVE to be in the same suit.
Or you could get three cards that are the same(three 5’s etc) and that is worth 30 [sup]1/2[/sup] points.
[li]The player that goes first can either pick up the card that the dealer flipped over or draw ONE card from the deck. He would then have to discard the card that he thinks would be the least helpful to him winning the game.(you can only have three cards in your hand at a time, unless you just drew a card)[/li][li]The rest of the players follow suit.[/li][li]When a player thinks he has a good hand (25 points+ is reccomended), he knocks and/or says “Scat!”. The rest of the players have one turn to build upon their scores. When the player who knocked is reached, he shows his cards, and so does everyone else. The player with the most points wins.[/li][/ul]

You can play for money. In addition to giving out 3 cards, someone give out pennies (if you’re poor or don’t feel like gambling much) or dollar bills or whatever. THREE to a person. Everybody has to have an equal amount of money. Whoever has the least amount of points has to put one of their pennies (or bills) into the ‘money pile’. When someone loses all of their pennies(or bills), they are out of the game. Whoever still has at least one bill(or penny) wins all of the money. BUT, if the person who knocks has the lowest score, they have to throw TWO bills(or pennies) into the money pile.

Fun game. Easy money.

30

A variation on regular five draw is the requirement that one have a pair of jacks or better to open and three of kind or better to win. The deal is passed and it usually takes several hands, so you get a better pot because everybody’s anteing on each deal, and every few hands someone can bet. Commonly called as, “Jacks or better, trips to win!”

Another one that’s good for times when you can only muster three players is Pitch. For this game you pull the 5s, 6s, 7s, and 8s from the deck. This game is based on taking tricks to gain points.

There are four points possible on each hand, determined at the end. The four points are for:

1.) High trump
2.) Low trump
3.) Jack of trumps
4.) Card points

Card points are determined as follows

10s = 10
Aces = 4
Kings = 3
Queens = 2
Jacks = 1

After everyone has anted (and since there’s no betting, we usually have a good ante, i.e., if you normally ante a quarter, put in a dollar) the dealer deals 6 cards, three at a time, to each player. There is no draw. Beginning with the player left of the dealer, bidding begins.

You bid based on how many of the four points you think you can take. If the first player bids one, then to take the bid, someone must beat that and bid two or more. The maximum bid is, of course four. This is where the game’s name comes from - if you’re going to bid four, the max, obviously nobody’s going to beat that, so you just “pitch” out your first lead an play begins. When the bidding has gone all the way around to the dealer, the first player has an opportunity to up the bid.

When the high bidder has been determined, that player leads the first trick. Whatever suit he throws out becomes the trump. The idea is to take tricks by playing the highest card of the suit lead or with a trump. You must follow suit, or trump if possible, but you can trump even if you could have followed suit.

At the end the points each player has garnered are counted and a total is kept. If the high bidder did not make their bid (i.e., bid 3 and got only 2), they get negative points in the amount of their bid (e.g., -3). The game is won when somebody makes a “rubber” (I didn’t name it), which is to say they’ve made seven points. If someone has negative points when the winner makes a rubber, they match the pot, everybody antes, and you play again.

It can be interesting, and even straight poker players’ll play it when you’ve only got three folks together. A hand of Ace, King, Queen, 10, 9 and 2 of the same suit is a very strong hand, but a bid of four would be very risky because you don’t know the Jack of what would be trumps should you take the bid is even in play (i.e., dealt) and without it you can’t get four. Fleeting alliances appear as someone approaches seven.