Dealer\'s Choice
 

Kinda curious to hear if and what poker variations everybody is playing at their respective home games.

One of the games I regularly play at is a Dealer's Choice game. While we mostly play NL Holdem and Pot Limit Omaha Hi/Lo, around 3 deals a round are some of these games:

KINGS AND WEENIES (Also known as Kings and Little) - 5 Draw with Kings AND the lowest card in your hand WILD. 5 of a kind is the best possible hand as with any wildcard game.

5 DRAW JACKS OR BETTER - Must have at least a pair of Jacks to open the betting. If nobody can open, we re-ante and redeal and repeat until somebody can open.

HIGH SPADE IN THE HOLE (Also known as "Chicago".) - 7 Stud. High spade in your hole cards splits half the pot. Dealer can also call this low spade, high diamond, high heart, low heart, etc.

CONTAGIOUS - 7 Stud with Suited Connectors wild. I.E. 5 [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] 6 [img]/images/graemlins/heart.gif[/img] both become whatever you need them to be. This applies to your hand only.

FOLLOW THE QUEEN - 7 card game. While it can be played in 7 stud format, 90% of the time it's dealt as "No Peek". What this means is you get all 7 of your cards FACE DOWN. Left of dealer goes first. He flips a card and decides wether to check or bet. The next person must then beat that person's board. I.E. If first person flips an Ace, the next person must keep flipping cards until they can beat Ace high. Once that happens he then checks or bets. We have also implimented a Match Pot Rule if you look at your cards. This is evil. I almost forgot! The most important part! If a Queen is flipped up the very next card is wild. If another Queen is flipped up later in the hand, the next card flipped becomes wild and the original wildcard returns to normal value.

OMAHA 2ND CARD ON THE FLOP IS WILD - This is pretty self explainitory.

RAZZ - 7 Stud. Lowest possible hand wins. 54321 is the best possible hand.

PINEAPPLE - Hold em variant. 3 cards dealt preflop to each person. There's a round of betting and then whoever is still in discards 1 card before the flop.

CRAZY PINEAPPLE - Same as Pineapple, but, the 1 card discard happens on the flop.

Anybody playing anything "crazy" too?

This game has been pretty good to me. I normally cash out with 2-3 buyins profit in a 2-3 hour period. Losing is VERY rare.

G O N E F O R E V E R

Re: Dealer\'s Choice
 

My game's lineup:

LHE, NLHE, PLHE, PLO, Limit O, O8(usually limit), stud, stud8, razz, 2-7 triple draw, a-5 triple draw, jacks or better draw, and crazy pineapple. Occasionally played but not often, no limit 2-7 lowball, NL or PL A-5 lowball, pineapple hi-lo, and stud hi-lo no qualifier.

Whenever the button makes a complete orbit the next person calls the game.

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Badugi

Re: Dealer\'s Choice
 

We've been setting up a second table as dealer's choice, and it's becoming a hit. Although we do a full orbit +1 with each choice, which is usually good, except when some joker picks a screwball game. Here are a couple that nobody likes:

1-2-3: Lowball draw game, you get three cards, three chances to draw. A23 is the best hand.

4-4-4: This one's mildly interesting. Each player gets four cards and four cards are dealt face-down on the board. You can use any combination of your hand the board for a 5-card hand, 4s are wild. Turn up the first board card, betting. Repeat with each additional card.

We've only done it a few times, but Pot Limit Omaha (hi or hi/lo) has proven very fun and expensive. Stud is also always good. Me, I'm a big fan of Razz. Haven't tried any of the Pineapple games yet, might give 'em a go.

Re: Dealer\'s Choice
 

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OMAHA 2ND CARD ON THE FLOP IS WILD - This is pretty self explainitory.

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Are wild cards really necessary in Omaha? The game is already enough of a crapshoot.

As for us , in addition to most of the games on your list we play Triple Draw, Badugi, Double flop holdem, 5 card draw 2 draws of 2, that Omaha variant where you deal everyone their hands then put out one flop card, that's about all i can think of at the moment.

Re: Dealer\'s Choice
 

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4-4-4: This one's mildly interesting. Each player gets four cards and four cards are dealt face-down on the board. You can use any combination of your hand the board for a 5-card hand, 4s are wild. Turn up the first board card, betting. Repeat with each additional card.

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i love this game. we call it 'four-fourty four'. very fun game when playin a friendly game.

Re: Dealer\'s Choice
 

Anyone ever play
sliders or criss cross or L or guts.

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Hmm.. Never played either of these. 444 sounds interesting. I might have to break that one out next session.

G O N E F O R E V E R

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Lol. I'm the only one that ever calls Omaha 2nd card wild. Honestly, the major reason I deal it is that it confuses people. When people are confused they make bad decisions. I use this to my benefit. =)

G O N E F O R E V E R

Re: Dealer\'s Choice
 

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Anyone ever play
sliders or criss cross or L or guts.

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YEARS ago I played with some people that play Guts. Nobody I know has even mentioned the game in the last 3 years or more.

Criss Cross. I've also heard it called Iron Cross. I don't like this game simply because there's far too many betting rounds before you actually get some info. For instance, there's 3 betting rounds before one of the flops has 2 cards revealed.

I've also played with some people that deal it as the center card is wild. This is a major vacuum as you must call 5 betting rounds before you find out what the wild card is. People really like this game though.

I prefer to hang on to my money and use it in games that I know I have an edge.

G O N E F O R E V E R

Re: Dealer\'s Choice
 

Guts is probably my favorite home games.
The version I play we call it pass one drop one in which your dealt 4 cards then pass one to you left. Then you play your best three cards. We do straights and flushes with a 4 card ghost dealer. We've seen $300 pots with 6 players using $1 chips.

How about black mariah.

Re: Dealer\'s Choice
 

Black Mariah was fun too. Nothing like building a nice fat pot and in the last couple cards the Black Mariah pops up! REDEAL! That's awesome and awful at the same time.

$300 guts? Yeah. Any Match Pot games can get out of hand real quick. Like In Between (Acey Deucey). That game can be absolutely evil as well. I've played with three other people where 3 out of the 4 of us went broke and had to sit and watch as the remaining player took our money. That sucked. Lol. You never like telling people you went broke playing Acey Deucey.

G O N E F O R E V E R

Re: Dealer\'s Choice
 

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Like In Between (Acey Deucey). That game can be absolutely evil as well. I've played with three other people where 3 out of the 4 of us went broke and had to sit and watch as the remaining player took our money. That sucked. Lol. You never like telling people you went broke playing Acey Deucey.

G O N E F O R E V E R

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We nicknamed that game "The Devil's Game" long ago. We do a little devil dance just after it's called. Index fingers alternating moving up and down below the waist, then put index finger up in devil horn position and flex digits about six times. Repeat at least once more, then begin betting your money away.

Beginners always over value their hands. It's ridiculous. We play where you have to pay a .25 penalty if you can't even play (you have pair, or connectors), and if you play and match a side card, you pay double what you wagered.

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one game i always loved to play, though it is not explicitly poker, is "red 4/14"

to start, everyone antes and is dealt 2 cards, one face down and one face up. the goal of the game is to get your cards to add up as close to 4 or 14 as possible, with the high and low hands splitting the pot. aces are worth 1 and/or 11, face cards are worth 1/2 point, and everything else is worth it's face value. but in this variation, ONLY RED CARDS COUNT. this is an important point as it helps build huge pots when a run of useless black cards hit.

so the ideal starting hand in this game is a red ace and a red 3 - you are already a lock to at least split the high and low.
to start, everyone gets their 2 cards and there is a round of betting. after the round of betting, anyone still in gets to choose if they want another card face-down or not, and there is another round of betting. it continues like this until everyone has either folded or is ready to stand pat with their hand. at this point, everyone shows their cards and the closest hands to 4 and 14 split the pot. we also sometimes play a variation where you have to declare whether you're going for high, low, or both, with the last better/raiser declaring first.

this is actually a variation of the game 7/27, which is played exactly the same way except all cards count and the low and high are 7 and 27 instead of 4 and 14. obviously you can make up any variant you want.

there is another great game, more poker-related, that we used to play called "challenge" and it's actually a mini-tournament that doesn't take too long to complete. if i have time and can actually remember all the rules, i'll describe it later.

Re: Dealer\'s Choice
 

as for guts, for us it was always 2-card guts w/ flushes and straights. i think it's more exciting than the 3-card version or 2-card with pairs only.

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Yeah between the sheets is brutul. Using $1 chips my dad about a month ago lost about $700 in one game of it. k2 ak and q4 at that point he was on tilt from it. The sickest guts hand i've ever seen was one guy stayed in with trip 5's. so he had to beat the ghost dealer. First 2 cards were 77. He said he got passed one of the sevens so he started to scoop and sure enough third card was a seven.

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Some other games we play are box(similar to criss cross) pryamid, neighbors, and pass the [censored].

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Like In Between (Acey Deucey). That game can be absolutely evil as well. I've played with three other people where 3 out of the 4 of us went broke and had to sit and watch as the remaining player took our money. That sucked. Lol. You never like telling people you went broke playing Acey Deucey.

G O N E F O R E V E R

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We nicknamed that game "The Devil's Game" long ago. We do a little devil dance just after it's called. Index fingers alternating moving up and down below the waist, then put index finger up in devil horn position and flex digits about six times. Repeat at least once more, then begin betting your money away.

Beginners always over value their hands. It's ridiculous. We play where you have to pay a .25 penalty if you can't even play (you have pair, or connectors), and if you play and match a side card, you pay double what you wagered.

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$.25 penalty??? That's brutal. The pots get big fast enough with out it.

Paying double, yeah. That's the real killer right there. Getting a low Ace and a high Ace and then turning over a 3rd Ace! Feels like somebody punched you in the stomach. lol.

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wait...why r u redealing in Black Mariah? i thought Black Mariah was the same game as Chicago (stud game where hi hand splits with hi spade in the hole)? if im wrong, plz give me a quick run down of the game, and where the redeal comes into play. thnx

Re: Dealer\'s Choice
 

Mariah is where if you have the q of spades in the hole you split the pot. If it comes up on board game restarts. Now for my game we have also thrown in that card after the queen is wild.

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Mariah is where if you have the q of spades in the hole you split the pot. If it comes up on board game restarts. Now for my game we have also thrown in that card after the queen is wild.

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We used to play this game differently. We played that in order to win the pot at showdown you had to have the best hand AND the highest Spade in the hole. If one player had the best hand, but not the highest Spade in the hole the hand would be dealt again (but only to the players who were in at showdown). This game used to amass huge pots.

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Mariah is where if you have the q of spades in the hole you split the pot. If it comes up on board game restarts. Now for my game we have also thrown in that card after the queen is wild.

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We used to play this game differently. We played that in order to win the pot at showdown you had to have the best hand AND the highest Spade in the hole. If one player had the best hand, but not the highest Spade in the hole the hand would be dealt again (but only to the players who were in at showdown). This game used to amass huge pots.

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We played a similar version in my monthly wildcard game, except EVERYONE could get dealt on the next hand.

It stopped when I would sit out and refuse to play every time it was starting to be dealt, because I HATED betting full houses for no reason other than to build the pot for later hands.

Re: Dealer\'s Choice
 

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wait...why r u redealing in Black Mariah? i thought Black Mariah was the same game as Chicago (stud game where hi hand splits with hi spade in the hole)? if im wrong, plz give me a quick run down of the game, and where the redeal comes into play. thnx

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I guess there's a few different ways people play Black Mariah. We've always played that if the Q [img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] hits the board, everybody that's still in the hand has to re-ante and play a new hand. If you folded prior to the Black Mariah appearing then you can not get in the new hand. We also use the Black Mariah as a wild if it's face down. I saw somebody else on here posted that they split the pot if they have it... I guess it all depends. Hell, if you're the dealer you can make up the rules and call it whatever you want.

G O N E F O R E V E R

Re: Dealer\'s Choice
 

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that Omaha variant where you deal everyone their hands then put out one flop card...

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"Courchevel"

Re: Dealer\'s Choice
 

We play 3-card guts with 2s and 3s wild. If two or more people are showing down they can each draw up to three cards.

If only one person is in that person has to face the "dummy" hand. There's been talk of finding a grim reaper doll to represent the "dummy" hand as it's led to IOUs on a couple of occassions.

Re: Dealer\'s Choice
 

We've got so many stud variations that we made up a new game, Nutsack. It's standard 7-stud dealing to start, but roll your own on the first card (all three down, everyone picks which one to flip up first). The trick is high card (closest to dealer in a tie) picks which stud variation to play on that hand. We use one to five betting ($1 max on 3rd st, $2 max on 4th, etc). This proceeds for an entire round and almost every hand someone will call off all their chips while two others are in a raising duel. It's funny.

Another popular stack spewer is any 7-stud variation that involves rolling your own all the way throughout the hand. Common event: You've got five kings and opponent has a weak pair on board and says "Five aces" at showdown. WTF?

Re: Dealer\'s Choice
 

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that Omaha variant where you deal everyone their hands then put out one flop card...

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"Courchevel"

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That's the one!

Re: Dealer\'s Choice
 

vanunu anyone? something i read about in one of negreaneu's columns. lots of fun but hard to remember if you havent played much.

Here's how it's played: seven-card stud, roll your own all the way, including your seventh-street card (roll your own means each card comes down to you, and you choose which one you want to turn over), high-low with no qualifier for high or low, with a pitch and a buy at the end, and declare.

Re: Dealer\'s Choice
 

try also anaconda and variations.interesting game

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try anaconda and variations.a very good game for home games

Re: Dealer\'s Choice
 

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FOLLOW THE QUEEN - 7 card game. While it can be played in 7 stud format, 90% of the time it's dealt as "No Peek". What this means is you get all 7 of your cards FACE DOWN. Left of dealer goes first. He flips a card and decides wether to check or bet. The next person must then beat that person's board. I.E. If first person flips an Ace, the next person must keep flipping cards until they can beat Ace high. Once that happens he then checks or bets. We have also implemented a Match Pot Rule if you look at your cards. This is evil. I almost forgot! The most important part! If a Queen is flipped up the very next card is wild. If another Queen is flipped up later in the hand, the next card flipped becomes wild and the original wildcard returns to normal value.

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I need some more details on the 7 card no peak form....

How does the betting work. Antes optional?

After the first person flips, if he bets does the next person need to call before they can start flipping?

What do you mean "match the pot if they look at their cards" do you mean after they fold or before they play?

george

Re: Dealer\'s Choice
 

I can answer most of these- we used to play no peek baseball in my monthly wild card group.

"How does the betting work. Antes optional?"
Antes are NEVER optional in ANY home wild card game. It's a national rule that a rediculass amount of money needs to be in the pot before the hand starts, to justify playing some of the crazy games that are played.

"After the first person flips, if he bets does the next person need to call before they can start flipping?"

EVERYONE needs to call before the next person starts flipping- it's poker. You can fold if you choose.

"What do you mean "match the pot if they look at their cards" do you mean after they fold or before they play?"

During play, I'm guessing. A penalty for cheating, accidently or not. Part of the game's "charm" is that you can fold, peek and flip out when you find out you had the one-outer after all.

Re: Dealer\'s Choice
 

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FOLLOW THE QUEEN - 7 card game. While it can be played in 7 stud format, 90% of the time it's dealt as "No Peek". The next person must then beat that person's board. I.E. If first person flips an Ace, the next person must keep flipping cards until they can beat Ace high.

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We played a version of this called Midnight Baseball. You could have more than 7 cards in your pile.

I'm assuming that a single Ace showing is beaten by the next person's Ace-deuce? Or do you need to draw pair or better?

Re: Dealer\'s Choice
 

Reading about some of these wild card games reminds me of the regular poker game I used to be a part of in college. We played "Nickle, Dime, Quarter" stakes and, at that time and for most of us, those were all the stakes we could handle.

We played some of the most outrageous wild card games too. We played "Black Mariah", a 7-stud game that was re-dealt including re-antes if the Queen of Spades came face up, "Follow The Queen", "Baseball" variations like "Midnight" which was no-peek, "Strike Out" which meant that if a 3 came face up the player holding that card had to fold without recourse (a totally screwed way to play but fun when it happened to someone else) but the Granddaddy of all the wild card games was what we knew as "Whores & Fours".

In this 7-stud game, Queens, Fours, One-Eyed Jacks (hearts and spades) & The Man With The Axe (King of Diamonds) were all wild. Yeah, 11 wild cards. If you had anything less than a full house you were just donating your money to the pot. It was most likely that 4 of a kind, a straight flush or 5 of a kind would end up winning. Oh, and on top of all those wild cards was another rule: Any player who had a natural pair of Sevens won, no matter what. Nothing was better than when your buddy just revealed his 5 Aces and you showed down your measly pair of Sevens and raked a monster pot.

Good Times!!!

Choose Your Own
 

This is five stud except that all upcards from third street on are placed in the middle of the table (one card per active player) and the player with the worst board showing chooses one of the upcards and adds it to his board and then the next worst board showing player does likewise and so on until all the cards are taken. After the upcards have been added whowever is high bets.

For example;

the first down and first upcard being dealt as normal,
Me: (A)2
Herbert Yardley: (?)7
Albert Morehead: (?)K
Norman Zadeh: (?)Q

just the four of us after the betting on second, the upcards for third are dealt in the middle:

A, K, 7, 2

I choose the A, which gives away i have an A face down and not a 2. Yardley chooses the 7, forcing Zadeh to choose K and Morehead takes the 2.

There is a round of betting, leaving just two:
Me(A)2A
Yardley (?)77

the upcards are now dealt to the middle:

7, K

I am worst hand showing and take the 7 obviously, Yardley has the K but he passed up one before so it won't help him.

I bet, he calls:

Me (A)2A7
Yardley: (?)77K

the last two upcards are:
7, K

I take the 7, and Yardley takes the K.

I bet confidently and Yardley calls for size of pot.

Re: Dealer\'s Choice
 

I don't much care for bizarre, luck-based games, so my group plays:

No Limit Hold 'Em
No Limit Five-card Draw (antes, with a bug)
No Limit Ace-to-Five Single-Draw Lowball (single blind)
Seven-card Stud High (limits about 3x the blinds of the NL games)

I'm also hoping to introduce Omaha High and Seven-card Razz into the mix, but we'll see.

Re: Dealer\'s Choice
 

In our home game we play 25c/50c blinds and the mix is:

No Limit Hold'em
Pot Limit/No Limit Omaha
Pot Limit/No Limit Omaha 8/b
Limit Stud (every once in a while)
5 card draw (every once in awhile)

and then once the night winds down and people are stuck a few hundo we get into the more clasic casino table games:

Chinese Poker
Pai Gow
BlackJack
Hi Card

And in addition to all this there are random prop/sidebets to go along

[YES WE ARE A BUNCH OF DEGENERATES! [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]]

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My homegame has a "no wildcards" rule, and mostly seems to focus on the rarer casino games. The current rotation is limit stud8, NL Kansas City lowball, PLO and sometimes limit 7-stud or razz or Jacks or better. We never do holdem because the people who don't play outside that game (rightly) believe the more serious players have a huge edge there.

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Okay, after reading all the games here, I am compelled to add one that I haven't seen posted yet (as far as I know). I try to discourage wild card games, and when somone in our group does call Follow The Queen I usually fold pretty quickly. For me, I want a game to have certain characteristics. One of those is the ability to bluff, which you cannot do in something like No Peek.

Having said all that, a friend of ours introduced a game back when we started having poker games a couple of years ago. It is called Challenge, and I'll do my best to explain it here:

Everyone takes one chip (whatever unit you decide) and places it in front of them. The dealer then deals each player 2 cards. These two cards will be played as low (ace will be low). It starts with the player to the left of the dealer. He/she decides if they think they have the best (lowest) hand. If so he places the cards out to indicate he will take on anyone who wishes to challenge him (or if he doesn't believe he has a good hand he can simply pass). Continuing to the left each person decides to except the challenge or pass until it comes back around to him. If no one excepts the challenge, he puts out a marker (different colored chip perhaps). If he is challenged, then he exchanges cards (discretely)on a one on one basis with each challenger. The loser of the challenge pays the winner the total of the chips on the table, meaning that if 4 players each put out a quarter in front of them the winner would be paid 1$ for that challenge. If 2 people challenge him and he beats them both, he collects a dollar from each one of them. It is not as difficult as it sounds due to the fact that often you will have people pass on a whole round. Which means you then...

Deal a third card to each player. This round is three card high. Same series of events ensues and then a fourth card is dealt. This is 4 card low. Then a final card is dealt, this is 5 card high. Each card is followed by a round of challenges or passes. The game ends when someone gains 3 markers, and they then scoop the antes from each player. If no one has three markers by the end of 5 card high, another unit is placed by the players in front of them (like another quarter) and now the cost of the challenge is 2$.

So you can see that as the rounds increase it becomes more and more expensive to challenge someone which makes bluffing a strong possibilty.

You could have Ace - 2 on your first two cards (the nuts), and then score another ace for a big pair on 3 card high.
And to clarify, ace is low in all low rounds, and high in all high rounds.
And by the way...at the beginning of each round, the action begins with the person to left of the person who acted first previously. A round being from 2 card low to 3 card high for example.

This game has become a staple at our dealer choice rounds. We then break the game and rechip for a NL HE tourney to end the night.

Let me know if you have any questions, it sounds really detailed, but it really is a good game with lots of action and no wild cards.



See ya!

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^^^ sounds pretty much like a more complicated version of guts