i did a search and could not find anything...

the cash games i host are dealer's choice. we play a very wide range of games to include off-the-wall games with wild cards. i know it is up to me as the "floor" to set the hand rankings, as some of the games have come down to showdowns with royal vs. royal w/wild cards and whatnot. my thinking is that a natural royal flush should be at the top of the list. here is what i am thinking, please chime in and lmk...

natural royal flush
5 of a kind (with either one or multiple wild cards)
royal flush with wild card or cards
natural straight flush
straight flush with wild cards

quads on down just come down to value without regard to natural or not...

don t value hands with wild cards different then hands without them. A royal flush is a royal flush with or without wild cards. 5 of a kind beats a royal flush

we usually play that 5 of a kind does not exist

and for fllushes, straights and straight flushes you hand is only as high as your most natural card (except for a wheel)

We don't change rankings based on natural or not, just makes for a harder time figuring things out.


Some games in the past have not allowed 5-of-a-kind to play (and some of those have allowed 6-of-a-kind instead?!?!)


When filling flushes, they have the highest value that isn't already accounted for. IE K T 7 W W = AKQT7 flush

When filling a straight... well, they are what you need them to be...

This...


and this.

This way, the only new ranking is a 5 of a kind, which is better than a straight flush. Simple.

We ran into this when we started making up our own games and we state the rules each time before the hand is dealt:

5-of-a-kind beats everything except a higher 5-of-a-kind
If a natural hand is matched with a wild-card hand, then the pot is split (i.e. straight to the 8 natural, vs straight to the 8 w/ wild.)

These two simple rules keeps things pretty easy to make a ruling.

Wild cards or not, hand rankings are based on rarity. Therefore, 5k beats straight flushes, when 1-2 wild cards are involved.

More than that, and wild cards kinda screw with the ordering of the lower hands. For simplicity's sake, rankings are maintained.

If you want to use natural cards as a tie-breaker, I wouldn't have any objections myself. You have much more of an advantage with the wild cards, so a penalty seems in order.

Wait, how is that any different than non-wild hands? Do you have that rule, just to avoid the "but mine was harder!" arguments?

Hand rankings aren't exactly based on rarity, as one pair and two pair are both more common than no pair in 7-card games, like hold'em... ...and no pair doesn't beat two pair.

That said, I wouldn't go re-arranging hands, and I wouldn't add five-of-a-kind to my list of hands - but I wouldn't lose too much sleep if you did.

In rare cases where my game uses a wildcard, we simply use a single-joker Bug. And it can complete straights, flushes or be an ace, adding only 5-aces to the possible hands.

Granted, but in 5-card hands, no pair is more common than 1-pair hands, so since poker generally started as a 5-card game....

And it would seem awfully silly to tell someone that their pair of Aces loses to 7-high, in a stud game.

That's not silly. I do that quite a bit.

IMO wild cards can be any card, and a hand with wild card(s) chops with the same "natural" hand. You can easily go all cross-eyed if you over-think wild cards. Like any movie involving time travel.

You also need to nail down whether the wild card can be the same as another card in one's five-card hand. For instance, does A-(wild)-J-7-2 all hearts beat A-K-J-7-2 all spades? I maintain that it does, because the wild card is another ace of hearts.

If you disagree, then you probably have to throw out five of a kind also. Because what is the suit of the wild card? Can it be that the fifth queen has no suit?? Is it the queen of kittens??? That's just silly. There are no kittens.

Actually our group always made a wild card in a flush the next card. We did this to maintain the use of wild cards as replacing a natural card. So if you held Ace king of hearts and you had a wild card, it would be the queen.

It's the Queen of Eagles (which was, at one point in history, a short-lived suit... iirc).

I disagree with the "duplicating a rank" version of wildcards. You've made a hand that's easier to get (with a wildcard) and THEN trumped the natural hand with a card that normally wouldn't exist.

For 5k, where suits don't matter and the wildcard isn't an 'illegal' duplicate of a card, it works. In other hands, the wild card needs to be representing a unique card, for THAT SPECIFIC TABLED HAND ONLY.



If you REALLY want to have some fun, have a rule that, if the matching natural card has been shown, it blocks the wild card from subbing for it.

So, if the Js is turned over in someone's hand, your "Js" wildcard now becomes a 10s in an AKQW9s hand.... and you lose to player three's AKQJ2 diamond hand.

Why do you hate kittens?

Interesting idea. I'm not a fan of wild card games, but I like the notion of hobbling the wild card a bit (which this does). The massive downside, of course, is that you can get "counterfeited" at showdown, and there's no skill apart from ESP that can help you avoid this type of situation.

Meh - I still hate wild card games.

I have a 6 suited, 76 card deck home. You know I always wanted to try a game with it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTTwcCVajAc

What cards are missing?

The better version.

I have a deck around here somewhere that has 56 cards - four suits with the usual 13 ranks in each plus a new rank "X". I was never sure what to do with the extra cards so I just took them out.

This makes me feel like looking at gary johnson websites.

You could mix a 4-color deck with a normal deck for at least 7 suits -- assuming you can get the same backs in both decks.

This sounds like a recipe for a new game. We'd have to do some odds calculations to determine hand frequencies and alter the rankings chart accordingly.

I will call it - MEGAPOKER.

Sorry, a typo on my part. There are 6 complete suits, 78 card deck. Red crowns and black anchors are the added cards