Razz -- worst hand wins on Absolute

[electrical]

What possible Seven-card hand could make 55532? I don't think that's possible, assuming trips count as trips and not a pair of Fives with a Five kicker.

[RustyBrooks]

Actually I don't think it's possible to have trips in your hand without a full house. Not "illegal" just impossible. Say you have only 3 different ranks of cards in your hand (required if you want to have trips because you need XXXYZ, if you had XXXYY it's a full house)

so you need at least XXXYZ and you'll need 2 other cards as well.
* If you add 2 Ys or 2 Zs then you get XXXYYYZ who's best hand is XXYYZ
* If you add 1 Y and 1 Z then you get XXXYYZZ who's best hand is XXYYZ (assuming X < Y < Z)
* if you add anything else, like AA or AB you get non-trips like XXYZA or XYZAB

You can still make a full house with XXXXYYY. I have never heard this is not considered a hand by the rules of razz but I've never seen it happen either.

[Xhad]

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Honestly, I think that the fault lies in two places:

First, I think the software that takes two (or more) hands and determines a winner incorrectly thought that aces, being better than 4's, lost. However, the part that determines the best hand did so correctly. That's my guess.

Second, support has no idea how to play Razz and is desperately trying to use the rules on the site to figure out how the software was working.

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Sounds right to me. Which is strange, come to think of it: the code which forms the best 5 card hand must have something internal which allows it to determine what the best hand is, obviously. It seems strange that there are apparently two different blocks of code to do the same thing. Wouldn't they have just made one class and re-used it to help avoid these sorts of problems?

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I only read to here, but choosing the best 5 card hand out of 7 and comparing it to another 5 card hand are sufficiently different functions that I would think you have to program them separately. Specifically in razz, I could see it being something like:

(sort all cards by rank)
(choose lowest card that hasn't already been placed in the 5 card hand)
(if none, choose the lowest card that would create a pair but not trips)
(if none, choose the lowest trips card)
(repeat the above until 5 cards chosen)

Then you'd have to have another separate algorithm to compare the 5 card hands to each other. Which would be simple but easily screwed up if you don't know AA is a low pair or aren't looking for such an error.

[Xhad]

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OK. Then...

How is a pair scored? Higher than a King?

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Yes.

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And is AA the highest pair or the lowest pair?

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Lowest pair.

The only reason this stuff isn't better known is probably because most people have only played lowball in the form of 8/b hi-lo if at all.

[jbrennen]

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You can still make a full house with XXXXYYY. I have never heard this is not considered a hand by the rules of razz but I've never seen it happen either.

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I always assumed that XXXXYYY played as a full house and lost to any non-full-house hand.

The odds against being dealt XXXXYYY in a 7 card game are about 214,397 to 1. On top of that, the odds that such a hand would actually stick around to see showdown have to be very small -- I think I'm being quite optimistic if I estimated that 1 in 500 of such hands would stick around to showdown either by being all in very early or by not having to call a bet on 5th street or later. (By 5th street, any such hand would be showing a pair and would be drawing to a pair at best.)

So figure somewhere around 100 million to 1 against such a hand actually reaching showdown... [img]/images/graemlins/shocked.gif[/img]

I've had my own two pair hand reach showdown, but that's only happened to me once, and such hands are a whole lot more likely than XXXXYYY. (In that hand, I had 2-9-K-K-9-K-2, I was the bring-in, got two callers, and they checked the hand down all the way.)

[Praxising]

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PokerStar's rules explicitly list 55532 as the worst hand from their examples (worse than KK432).

In A-5 lowball draw, full houses and trips certainly do exist.

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This isn't A-5 lowball draw, though; it's Razz. And Poker Stars is wrong, as I just emailed them. Of course, like Absolute, they might insist they are right.

As SG said, the PS example can't be made as a showdown hand in Razz from any 7 cards.

But - when you make a Razz hand, you take uniquely-ranked cards and group them, to get the lowest hand, so, if you have only four unique cards (8765) and put the next lowest card available in front: so from 8765888 you end up with 88 765. So, even if there could be such a hand as 55532, it would still be the three lowest cards (532) preceeded by the 55.

But it really doesn't matter as it's all theoretical and not practical. Or, hey, I'm wrong. Been known to happen.

[Xhad]

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This isn't A-5 lowball draw, though; it's Razz.

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Isn't razz->stud as A-5 lowball draw->draw high?

If not, can you provide a source?

[jbrennen]

The reason that trips don't "play" in Razz has nothing to do with any of sort of rule which says that trips don't exist or don't count. It has to do with the fact that Razz is a 7-card game, and any 7 card hand which can make a valid trips hand (XXX-Y-Z) can also make a two pair hand which plays lower. In other words, there is no 7 card Razz hand where you would choose to play trips as your 5-card low.

[MarkGritter]

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The reason that trips don't "play" in Razz has nothing to do with any of sort of rule which says that trips don't exist or don't count. It has to do with the fact that Razz is a 7-card game, and any 7 card hand which can make a valid trips hand (XXX-Y-Z) can also make a two pair hand which plays lower. In other words, there is no 7 card Razz hand where you would choose to play trips as your 5-card low.

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That is correct as far as 55532 goes, but I still don't understand what makes Praxising say that 5555333 is just a two-pair hand.

In practice I think that 5555333 should lose to 9988777.

If player A had 6665 as his upcards and player B had 7788, would player A act first because he had the low board with just "one pair"?

Unfortunately the official rules for various CA cardrooms I have looked at don't clarify at all, nor does Sklansky on Razz--- nor can I find any clarification for high/low split (unqualified) in which the situation might be more likely to arise! (Play er A has 4444555, quads for high and 55444 for low. Player B has AAA7788, aces full for high and 877AA for low. I don't think player A should scoop.)

I find Praxising' claim that the "A-5" ranking used in Razz is different from the "A-5" ranking used in 5-card poker to be extraordinary.

[Xhad]

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The reason that trips don't "play" in Razz has nothing to do with any of sort of rule which says that trips don't exist or don't count. It has to do with the fact that Razz is a 7-card game, and any 7 card hand which can make a valid trips hand (XXX-Y-Z) can also make a two pair hand which plays lower. In other words, there is no 7 card Razz hand where you would choose to play trips as your 5-card low.

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I almost amended my post to say this, but I realize this part. That still doesn't explain statements like:

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So, even if there could be such a hand as 55532, it would still be the three lowest cards (532) preceeded by the 55.

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Which make it sound like the hand rankings are different from A-5 lowball, which to my knowledge they're not.