Quote:
Originally Posted by DavidNB
Nice choice of games, must be a great dealers choice night. Just curious why you don't follow RROP or atleast as a starting point?
In fact I do. I did consult RROP ver 4 way back in 1994 when I first put down my home rules. I also consulted with other sources. See the refference section at the end of my rules. BTW, Bob Ciaffone did review my rules, commented on them, and I did make some changes based on his input.
RROP were written orginally for a CARD ROOM. I'm not running a card room, I'm running a Dealer's Choice HOME game. Big difference. In a card room, the game played at a table is the same deal after deal. In my home game the game can CHANGE with every deal. The players deal the cards. To make everything consistant except the game, a number of changes are in order.
First and foremost, the ranking of hands NEVER changes. Change the game if you like but the hand rankings ALWAYS remains the same. With new players this is important. I worked in banking for 20 years and would organized the poker games when we would attend conventions, management offsite mettings etc. Lots of new players would join in and having a unified ranking system makes it easy for everyone to join in.
An area of confusion always comes up is how to rank the low hands. Using California Lowball with the A-5 Wheel where flushes and straights don't count in one hand but do in the next is problemmatic. That's why I play A-6 lows i.e. Chicago Wheel/London Lowball/Royal 64. A flush is a flush. A straight is a straight. Never changes. And A-6 is the mathamaticly correct low hand when the A is high or low. Since the ace is played high or low, using KC Lowball Duce to Seven lows causes the hand ranking system to change as the ace is played high only. Not consistant, therefore not used.
Yeras ago I allowed Canadian Stud but it was a problem because it had a special hand ranking (four flush beats a pair). It was confusing to the players so out it went and in came Crown Stud.
Secondly, there are a lot of home players who want to play trash games like baseball, duces wild, hi/lo Chicago, pass the trash etc which I do not allow. Having rules wrriten that specific limits what games can be called by the dealer solves all those issues up front.
Most of the esoteric rules that I have were put in to solve an issue that came up at some point. Example is Rule 26i:
Couples may play in the game but are not permitted to sit next to each other (except in tournaments), share chips, or to advise each other. Everyone plays for himself or herself.
RROP doesn't say anything about it but I've had couples sit down and play and before long the wife is asking her husband what to do, the husband borrows chips from his wife's stack to bet etc. So in came the rule and that crap ended.
Before I had my house rules written down, evertime I played poker with a mixed crowed, sometime during the night someone would say "That's not how we play it in Iowa" or "According to Hoyle..". House rules ends those fights. BTW Hoyle died in 1769 and never played a hand of poker.
My rules follow what you are likely to encounter in a casino but are tailored specificly for a home game.
Last edited by Aoresteen; 01-18-2014 at 01:10 PM.