I like the large print on the board but I don't like having to peel my cards up so far to see the suits. I guess 4 color would solve this though...

I've used four-color Copags in home games. By far the #1 biggest problem is that spades are black and diamonds are blue, which are easy to tell apart on a monitor but can be rather difficult live, especially in poor lighting. Both are pointed suits, so people have to pull their cards back farther to see which suit it is and even then occasionally mix them up, whereas with a two-color deck the two pointed-top suits are opposite colors. I think they're fun to use, but there is almost always one or two people who whine about confusing diamonds and spades.

The only four-color deck I've seen that doesn't have this problem is Bicycle, which uses yellow for diamonds. They're really pretty cards, but they have two other problems. First, they're not plastic, and second, and much more annoying, they only come in one back color, so you can't shuffle one deck while playing with another.

If a company could fix these problems, I'd be much happier using them.

Ah, weird.... so is Hessler's the Bicycle deck you're referring to? This seems to be an example:

https://www.djmcadam.com/four-color-decks.html

The yellow diamonds surprise me only because I used to be very fond of the Bicycle E-Z See that have four colors and immense indices. I guess yellow can't be easily seen but it seems like it would provide more variation than green. The blue in those decks is a fairly light blue that would be hard to confuse with black. Obviously they're completely impractical for poker (and for bridge for that matter).

Or more specifically, for the red-green color blind, it provides variation where there would otherwise be none.

The Copag four-color deck with blue diamonds and green clubs is my favorite deck. I, for one, would love it if my casino used four-color decks.

Plus it reminds me of Lucky Charms!

Run It Up Reno at the Peppermill is debuting 4 color decks in mixed game tournaments this fall. I heard that previously 4 color decks weren't approved by the Nevada Gaming Commision, although I can't confirm this one way or another. Personally I agree with one of the above posts which is that these are great online especially when multi tabling but I've never had an issue live and 4 color may even make things worse. Fine as a novelty I suppose. I'd much prefer quality cards over 4 color.

that would be really cool, ive mistaken a board before not noticing flush came in.

live poker players really like playing poker, so much that they will probably still turn out in spite of not liking new decks. i think it's criminally wrong to not use bridge cards or larger print.

On Pokerstars I believe you can switch to a 4-color deck as a player option. Not positive though. I dislike it and wouldn't want to switch.

You 100% can, and I don't know of a single poker site on which you cannot. 4 color may even be default on some sites and apps (it is on Pineapple, the OFC app). I wouldn't think of playing 3+ tables online without a 4 color deck. Much better for poker streamers too, especially for those watching on mobile.

I'm curious: what do you dislike about it?

I found it distracting. I guess my brain is sufficiently trained to sort the red-black, S-C-H-D. It's not that hard. I find that ingrained process easier than sorting by color. I usually play only 3 or 4 tables, so I don't know how it affects the 24 table guys.

Also IMO it's just another way of coddling the weak minded people of today. It's so obviously part of Satan's plot to weaken Humanity by swaddling the entire world in enough cotton batting that nobody will have to struggle against anything, or see anything bad, or experience even the slightest bump in the road. Then, once nobody has had to cope with anything at all for a generation or two, BOOM! goes the dynamite of Armageddon, and any faint hope of Humanity surviving will be lost in the flabby mewling of all these namby pamby millennial social justice warriors, who can't save themselves from anything because they can't google "How to Survive Armageddon," on their non-functioning smartphones. All because we switched to a four-color deck. That's why I don't like it

Yeah, when armageddon comes only the strongest poker players with the l33test soul reading skillz0rs will survive.

Just because it's hard to get used to the 4 color decks doesn't mean it's not better.

It was hard to move our whole casette collection to CDs, too.

What are CDs? =P

I wouldn't say it was hard, I just didn't like it. I found that I had to look at the cards instead of just seeing them. I barely tried it, I'm sure you get used to it. But why bother, if it's not demonstrably better? Maybe it is better if you are mass-tabling, which I don't do.

Anyway you're sort of making my point for me with your CD reference, since everyone knows that Vinyl was better than anything else.

Why do you assume it's not demonstrably better?

The 4 color decks fall into the category of "obviously non-inferior." Just like a 2-color deck can't be worse than a 1-color deck. Some people find it helpful and some people don't care, but it's very hard to imagine a scenario where someone who isn't used to a certain type for historical reasons would find it worse.

I bet if you were to take a group of people who were not used to playing cards, they would make fewer mistakes with the 4-color deck than with the 2-color deck, and fewer mistakes with yhe 2-color deck than a 1-color deck.

Read my previous post. If you want the world to collapse into the fiery hell of Armageddon, I won't stand in your way. I'm in my 50's anyway so it won't affect me for too long.

For me it is not demonstrably better. Perhaps because I have been processing a two color deck for 50 years, none the less I find the 4 color deck distracting, and gain no benefit from it's use. I find that the symbols on the cards are sufficient for me to determine if a card is one suit or another. I also find the 4 color deck to be aesthetically displeasing, I don't like how it looks.

Sorry, I misinterpreted your post.

When you said "demonstrably better" I thought you meant demonstrably better, not subjectively better.

Please demonstrate to me how a four color deck will improve my play, or increase the value of my experience while playing.

Let's start with an obvious question: do you consider a 2-color deck to be better, worse, or the same as a 1-color deck?

It is certainly possible that a 4 color deck wouldn't help him very much, but it would help his less observant opponents much more. Then it would effectively harm him, as his opponents would start playing better relative to him. Every change helps some people more than others, and moving to a 4 color deck would likely help new players more than veterans.

Wait wait wait... hang on guys. Y'all are assuming that fo color deck means each suit is all of one color. What if the 2 and 7 are red but the 3 and K are blue? Surely that would have to be an advantage for the sharps right?


(My silliness aside actually Rob is right--it's a zero sum game--but there really aren't many arguments to be made besides taste. Maybe, like me, you just think a game where people don't misread their hands is more fun, but it doesn't make a difference that often anyway.)

Let me preface this post by saying that I really couldn't care less about the subject. I seriously doubt that I will run across a four-color deck in a casino anytime soon, and I am not compelled to use one on-line. So this is the definition of a non-issue in my book. The only reason I'm posting in this thread at all is that I'm bored AF in my role as a guy who took early retirement for a mediocre pension in order to become a care giver for a very ill and aged mother, and struggles to eke out a part-time income playing internet poker. Since winning two tournaments back to back at the end of July I've barely had more than a min-cash and my game is in shambles, so lately I have some small blocks of time to fill when I would normally be playing, and that has led me here. That's all.

Regarding your point that because a two color deck is superior to a one color deck, therefore a four color deck is superior to a two color deck. The logic behind this point is flawed. If your logic were sound then it would naturally follow that a 13 color deck or a 52 color deck would be superior as well. This is obviously not the case. I could point you to research available online regarding the over-complication of systems, or to research regarding the way the human brain processes information, (which is fascinating stuff, especially when you start getting into things like the physical differences in the ways that Millennial brains and Boomer brains process visual information.) However, while I am bored, I'm not bored enough to surf out the links. Find it yourself if you care. But leave it to say that adding more variables to a system does not necessarily improve it, nor does it logically follow that if two is superior to one, therefore four must be superior to two.

Anyway the two color deck has stood the test of time. It has been used throughout western culture, in almost exactly it's current form, for an uninterrupted span of OVER 500 YEARS. If it were going to be improved upon, perhaps it would have happened already during those five centuries. Beyond basic tools like a hoe or a knife, I cannot think of many things we use in every day life that have remained unchanged since a hundred years before the Pilgrims spied Plymouth Rock. But if you're sure you can improve on it now, then you do you.

You stop at 4 because that's how many suits there are.