CP high with a pass?

[Phat Mack]

I've put in a couple of hours playing Chinese Poker, all high, where the players pass two cards: left, right, across and hold.

Has anybody played or investigated this game? I haven't played a statistically significant number of hands, but it seemed to me that the hand values were slightly higher. I don't know whether this was because of the pass, or whether it was because players were setting their hands sub-optimally. I'm not sure why passing cards would skew hand values, but I'm still thinking about it...

[LLCoolDave]

Do you pass on cards after viewing them? In that case, it's pretty obvious the average hand values should increase slightly. You will pick the two cards that fit the worst in your hand to pass them on and receive two more cards for them, which could help you complete a flush or full house you couldn't lay before without actually penelizing you for it as the cards you passed likely were mere Kicker or Filler cards with no value to you.

[Phat Mack]

That makes sense. You are making a hand from a pool of 15 cards rather than 13. I was thinking that replacing two worthless cards with two worthless cards wouldn't make much difference. But they make flushes and full houses.

It seemed that boats were needed in back, and > 2pair for the middle. It seemed that >QQ was needed for the front, which surprises me, but maybe having more straights in the middle frees up bigger pairs for the front. Like I said, though, I have very little data.

[2461Badugi]

Be more inclined to pass the Q[img]/images/graemlins/spade.gif[/img] to your left than your right.

Seriously, I have no idea. Getting the right seat in a game like this is probably huge.

[DeathDonkey]

Yes this is a fun variant that adds tremendous variance because the passed cards usually improve your hand significantly. I love playing with a pass.

-DeathDonkey

[palman]

we play CP with 2-7 in the middle with 3 passes like you describe. Also:

Trips up front =3
wheel in middle =3
quads=4
str8 flush 5
royal 7

Could give you plenty of strategy for that. And it's incredibly fun.