Newly introduced game at our dealers choice spread limit game.

Another bastardized version of a barely poker game

Dealer antes (the way all our games, even those normally with a SB/BB, run).

Deal 5 cards to all players.
Deal 3 rows of 5 cards face down (could/should be dealt as needed by hand, but that isn't the way this game runs).

G1 - G2 - G3 - G4 - G5
B1 - B3 - B5 - B7 - B9
B2 - B4 - B6 - B8 - B10

Cards in the G-Row (good) are community cards, and may play in any combination with the 5 cards from your hand. In theory, you could have a choice of 10 cards (5 in hand, 5 on board) to choose from to make your best 5 card poker hand.

Cards in the B-Rows (bad) remove matching ranked cards from your hand, as well as the G-Row.

Generally, high poker hand takes half the pot.
Low pip value in hand takes half the pot. Aces = 1, pip values, faces = 10.

A player who loses all their cards, scoops the whole pot, game ends.


Turn over the first column of cards (G1, B1, B2).

Cards that match the rank of B1 & B2 must be discarded from hands. If they are board cards (now or later), they will be moved 'out of play'.

Betting round

Turn over next column (G2, B3, B4). Cards matching B3 or B4 are removed from the board/hands. If G2 matches B1/B2, it is removed as well.

Betting round

Repeat until all cards are exposed (G5, B9, B10).

Final Betting round & Showdown.


So far, we've usually done it with progressive betting. No betting 'preflop', but a forced 1 unit bet on the 1st column, 2 unit on 2nd column, through a 5 unit bet on the last column. Left of dealer starts the action on the 1st betting round. Left of the last person to open the action starts the action on the next betting round. IE... If player 3 folds instead of opening for 3 units on 3rd column, and player 4 does open, then the 4th column open goes to the left of player 4.

Twist made to play with 2 Good Rows and 1 Bad row. Best hand from your hand and either 1 of the rows is used.


It was introduced on Thursday, and called at least once per orbit. Pretty passive play until a player had a 2 card difference on the field... (1 card with nobody under 3, or 5 cards with nobody above 3).

Only 1 player scooped by getting rid of all their cards. The game ended, even though other players might have later gotten rid of all their cards too. It was also decided, that despite a pause between the reveal of cards B1 & B2, they were to be treated as being revealed at the same time, and therefore any player getting rid of all their remaining cards on a column would get an equal share of the pot.

One scoop by a player with a pair of Aces in hand, winning high hand, and low points.


Definitely a 'bingo' type game, and the sign that some players are getting 'tired' of the usual games in the rotation.


Comments, questions and 'strategy' talk all welcome

Heh, it seems that you guys play a decent amount of "barely poker" games, which is almost what my group plays exclusively. This game is kind of like a combination of 2 games we play, though each is only played occasionally. For high-hand in your game, do the hands have to be standard...for example, if you are down to 4 playable cards, can you have a 4-card flush, or only a 5-card flush is a legal high hand? I am curious, because with 10 bad cards, it seems like you could have not many valid cards to play with at the end.

Our betting is similar to what you describe, and how most of our games go, with a progressive bet, opener is left of dealer on first round, and rotates one spot left with each betting round. All our games are played declare style at the end.

We play "Good guys, Bad guys", each player dealt 5 cards, and two 5-card community rows. One row is "good", and one row is "bad", basically just like your board less one row. Just like your game, bad card ranks cannot be used, and good cards form a community board to be used at the end. However we play it as a standard high-low game at the end. We do not actually discard "bad" cards from our hands, which it seems like you guys do, so you will be unsure of how many playable cards each person has. A final twist in our game as compared to yours, is that the last status on the board holds for a given card...i.e. say a King comes in the "bad" row, that card is dead. But if the next turn brings a King on the good row, Kings are back in. And so on.

The second game we play is called either Dropsy, or Emergency. 5 cards dealt to each player (though I suppose it could be played with 6 also). There is no board with this game. High-low game, but hands are pip-value based, with number cards worth that amount, face cards 10, and aces 1 or 11 (basically like blackjack values).

Player to left of dealer goes first, and must discard a rank from his hand face up...all other players with that card must also discard it. If any player has more than one such card, all must be discarded. The dropper could therefore discard more than one card if he has a pair or trips in his hand. This is followed by betting round. Player left of first dropper then drops a card from his hand with same rules, followed by betting round. This continues until all players have had one drop or folded. If you have 8 players, there is a maximum possibility of 8 drops, which can decrease in number as people fold. After last drop by dealer (or last remaining player), there is a final betting round, then declare. Perfect low is getting rid of all cards for 0.

This game can be somewhat passive, but sometimes generates huge pots. Though we have plenty of players who hang around hoping to be "hit" by subsequent drops.

Guilty. We play for bragging rights, ball busting and cigar money



Yes, it's a bastardization of an existing game called either "The good, the bad and the ugly" or "Real poker".

Yes, standard 5 card hands. If you don't have 5 cards (combo of your hand and the still good cards), you don't have flush, straight or full house.

Yes, it seems that there is always at least 1 player with less than 2 cards by the end.


We don't play any declare style games. All our games are cards speak.

Our GBU/RP version has 2 columns, one good and one bad. Bad trumps good, and knowing how many cards a player has helps. It's high only for us.


This one might have legs... I've played a game called Bingo, where it's simply 5 'bad' cards. Also hi-low, but I think aces are 15 only. Haven't played it in a while. I do like the prospect of everyone dropping a card in or
der. It may have a bit too much positional advantage though. We play just one deal of each game (not an orbit) so positional advantages don't necessarily even out.

Yes, there is definitely a positional advantage element in Dropsy if you are the dealer/last drop.

We also play just a single deal...guys in my group don't really get too worked up over the positional advantage for whatever reason. We usually only end up playing this game once, maybe twice a session, and its almost always the same guy that deals it.

Wow, I had no idea other people played this. We call it 'scarny' and have some slight modifications, but its essentially the same game.

I'll have to think of a way to offset the dealer advantage. Unfortunately, there is always going to be a 'last to pitch' advantage, and I'm not a fan of anyone having it.

In the meantime...

So we sat with 8 last night, and 5 cards per player meant only 2 rows (1 good, 1 bad) instead of the 3 rows we'd been playing.


"Short Peter" or "High poker, Low points" kept getting called, so the gang does like it.

Also added in that paint cards were a half (from our "Seven and a half, Twenty seven and a half" game). Gave people a better chance to scoop the whole pot (didn't happen that way).

We did see 2 players drop all their cards to scoop the pot, after going 7 handed and 10 'bad' cards.



Go ahead, I'm game for a 'scarny' lesson

A group of friends and I would play some weird games back in high school. not really sure where most of them came from but we played one similar to this that we called pyramid.

Everyone is dealt 4 cards. Then a pyramid of community cards is placed face down on the table in rows of 4-2-1. We were dumb kids so didn't really know what a burn card was really meant for so this should probably not be laid out like this to start but it worked for us. We also didn't know any other kind of betting besides no limit cause we watched NL holdem on tv all the time so we played this game NL as well.

After dealing we would have one round of betting. We then reveal two cards from the bottom row of 4. These are discards. any card in your hand matching this card would be discarded. If discards were ever duplicated another card from the deck would take its place. Another round of betting followed by the next two cards being revealed. Betting again then one card from the row of 2. This was a community card. Betting then the next card in the second row. Again followed by betting then the top card revealed. This card was a community wild card. Meaning this card and any card in your hand that matched its number would become wild. Best 5 card hand wins. 5 of a kind is possible with wilds.

If any of the 3 community cards matched a discard card it would be discarded and a new card from the deck would replace it.

This game was kind of dumb but I think it really had to do with betting NL style. Limit or some sort of point betting might actually make sense here.

This sounds great and perfect for one of my home games. Will report back.