[Phat Mack]

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"Democratic Poker"

Odd number of players necessary. 5 seems a good number due to that being the number of rounds.

Each player is dealt two hole cards (or however many, could be Omaha style hands if you wanted). There is no betting, perhaps an ante could be taken at the start. Two cards are revealed from the deck, and starting from the first player to act for that round, votes are taken for which card is to be the next community card. Rotating one player to start the voting for the next card, another two cards are revealed and voted for. Continue until five community cards are selected. Hands go to showdown and the best high hand wins.

It seems there could be quite a bit of strategy firstly with voting strategically to deny other hands based on previous voting habits, and secondly by implicit collusion (which could be encouraged) by having players without a hope of winning the pot voting to help someone else's hand in the hope that they may recognise this and do the same for you in a latter hand.

Another possibility is having two winners, particularly for larger numbers of players, which could lead to more intricate decisions such as implicit collusion occuring in the space of a single hand.

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I really think this game has potential. It might even affect starting hand selection if voting patterns could be identified, allowing the play of non-standard hands.

It might be useful to come up with a mechanism for allowing an even number of players; say, not allowing the button to vote, or only allowing the button to vote in case of a tie. (Call the button the Vice President. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] )

An interesting variant might be to expose some of the player's cards, e.g. one card in hold 'em or two in omaha. Or even play it "Indian" style.