I guess if everyone knew beforehand a royal flush beat 5 of a kind that would be okay, but to me it would be as strange as showing up to a game and being told their house rules have straights beating flushes.

Although it has been a long time since I've played in a game that included wild cards, The 2 rules you have listed above were always used.


This one is interesting. Does this mean if you have the actual 4 jacks, plus a wild card, it is not a 5 of a kind because you already have Js, Jd, Jh, & Jc, so the best card not already in your hand would be an Ace?

No, I believe what he is saying is wild card doesn't have to be a card in hand. So if you have AKQ10and the 2 where deuces are wild, the 2 can represent the J for a royal.

I played in a game in college (we used change instead of chips) where the wild card could only be a card in your hand. The hand I gave above would be a pair of A's with a K kicker.

I have always gone with 5 of a kind beats a royal flush. Whether your hand is natural or with wild cards , it is treated the same. It doesn t make sense to me to favor one over the other. Wild cards can be any card you want except of course in flush. If you are holding AT85 plus a wild card then your wild card would be the K. You can't have a double A high flush

We favor a natural Royal Flush as better than 5 of a kind because there are 4 and only ways in make a natural RF. Where as we can make a 5 of kind with as little as just one and only one wild card* in 13 different ways. In other word, with one and only one wild card, 5 of kind occurs 3.25 times more often than a natural RF. There are 39 ways to make 5 of kind with 2 wild cards or almost 7 times more likely than a natural RF and odds improve dramatically for each wild card you allow.

* Assuming the one and only wild card is not a AKQJ or T and is one of the 52 cards in the deck, i.e. not a Joker added to the deck.

Yea thats fine but do you make adjustments to every hand for naturals? The problem I have with what your doing is the odds of being dealt a RF is about 649,000 to 1 and your group actually considers it important enougth to make a rule change incase someone actually gets dealt it. If your group plays about 100 hands a nite then the odds would be someone in your group would hit it once every 6, 490 nites you play or once every 124 years.

To me the easest and fairest way to play with wild cards is don 't rank naturals over hands with wild cards.

So tilting to read posts that say "5oak beats a royal" or a "royal beats 5oak".

Why can't they say "5oak beat a straight flush" or a "straight flush beats 5oak"?

Surely if a royal beats 5oak then a K high straight flush beats 5 of a kind too. And if that is the case why are we using the term royal when we mean straight flush. We don't use 5 aces when referring to 5oak.

...sorry for the rant.

you make a good point. We should be comparing the odds of a straight flush and 5 of a kind.

Wait, wat?

I don't ever think I've seen 5k referred to as "5oak" ( even though I just figured out that you didn't mean "five oak" )... though I would think that I should have.

But, anyway- technically, yes, it should be all straight flushes.... but since a royal exists and 5k usually doesn't, it's allowing for that normal progression.

Besides, do you really want to argue with someone that a 65432 should beat the 5k?

A long time ago, the best hand possible in poker was AAAAx or KKKKA. This was because the straight and the flush (hence the straight flush) had not yet been invented. The game evolved and straights, flushes, and straight flushes became widely accepted. However, the old time players weren't too keen on the new-fangled way the kids were playing the game and it just didn't seem right if AAAA was not the best hand. Therefore, as a compromise, there was a brief period in poker history during which a straight flush beat 4 of a kind unless that 4 of a kind was AAAA in which case quad As wins. I guess it just preserved the feel of the game for some people...

I think that is what we have a case of here. People don't want the Royal Flush to be beatable. It just doesn't seem right. After all, you only get a very very small number of natural royal flushes in your life. Just seems wrong to have it beat by some wild card aided 5 of a kind. So they make rules about naturals playing higher and so forth, but it doesn't really make sense when it comes down to it now does it? Naturals don't play higher in any other hands. Why that one?

Like the old timers did to preserve their AAAA, play it the way you find the most fun and satisfying. Ultimately, however, there's no reason 5 of a kind should not beat any straight flush; royal or not; natural or not.

Yeah, yeah. I lost a 2 somewhere. The actual number only helps makes my point that a natural RF should beat 5 of kind.

Actually RROP does make a brief statement on use of a wild card in section 12. Among other rules, it says 5 aces is the best hand possible


THE JOKER
1. The players will be alerted as to whether the joker is in use.

2. The joker may be used only as an ace, or to complete a straight, flush, or straight flush. (Thus it is not a completely wild card.)

3. If the joker is used to make a flush, it will be the highest card of the flush not present in the hand.

4. Five aces is the best possible hand (four aces and joker).

well, duh. There are now 24 royals, vs. 13 'five-oaks"... and the five-of-a-kinds blow away the straight flushes.

I was trying to point out to other posters that five of a kind isn t really made up. There is reference to it in RROP

I think you misunderstand what people meant when they said "made up." It is impossible to have 5 cards of the same rank in poker because there are not 5 cards of the same rank in a card deck. Therefore, it is not a "real" hand. We imagine that 4 aces plus a joker is 5 of a kind and it plays that way, but it's not really 5 of a kind because a joker is not an ace. We simply pretend it is. It's all just semantics, though. Everyone is already aware that it is possible in a wild card game to have a hand that plays as if it were 5 of a kind, and no one would argue that. So you're pointing out something everybody already knows.