In Draw Poker If You Are Dealt A Pair Should You Discard All Three Of The Other Cards

What are some fun poker variants to add to my weekly card game?

A poker variant that, to my knowledge, friends and I invented is something we called ‘tic-tac-toe’ poker.Players are dealt two hole cards and must use both to maker a final hand.The flop looks like a normal Hold ’Em flop, but the turn and river are dealt as a 3-card rows placed below the flop. You end up with a board that is a 3x3 grid and players can use any straight line of cards (i.e. a line that would win tic-tac-toe):Flop: 1–3, Turn 4–6, River: 7–9. Red lines indicate the board card combinations that can be used with your hole cards to make a poker hand.Drawing hands really only start to take shape on the turn since it is most likely that only zero or one flop card will form part of your final hand. For this reason the variant is best played with some betting restrictions - either pot, half-pot or limit - to prevent pre-flop and flop all-ins.You could easily make further adaptations such as dealing four hole cards like Omaha since people have to play two hole cards, or allowing people to use board cards that aren’t in a straight line etc.I don’t know how well this variant would hold up to extensive play and number-crunch by serious players, the card in the ‘5’ position is obviously of huge importance so maybe it’s unbalanced for that reason.In my group it created a lot of frustration for some and laughter for everyone else as a variation to play for a couple of orbits late in the night as people frequently misunderstood what their hands actually were.Chinese poker, either regular or openface, are also great variants. There are lots of good explanations available on these variants so I’ll leave you to google those.

What is a scenario where someone can win a card game like poker with jacks?

If you want a dramatic example in which Jacks figure specifically, not just like any card, the second-most popular poker variant in the 1950s was draw poker, Jacks or better to open. This means you had to be dealt a pair of Jacks or a better hand in order to make the first bet.In this game it is tempting to cheat by opening the betting with four to a flush or outside straight. You draw one card, but because other players think you must have had a pair of Jacks or better to open, they figure you for two pair, possibly three of a kind. Those hands are unlikely to improve, only four of the 47 outstanding cards help. But with four to a flush you have nine cards to make your and, and with an outside straight you have eight.This means other players put you on maybe 30% a high pair, 64% a strong hand and 6% a very strong hand. In fact, you have 17% to 19% chance of a very strong hand, and if you don’t get it, no chance of anything better than a pair. This misconception puts you in a strong position to make money.If you split your openers (discarding one or both of the high pair that allowed you to open) or if you win the pot because everyone else folds, the other players have the right to ask to see your openers. If you don’t have them, you do not get the pot, and will have been caught cheating. For a mobster in the 1950s, that could be very bad.So imagine a desperate player dealt, say, two, three, four and five of diamonds plus the Jack of spades. If you open this hand and discard the Jack, there are 15 of the 47 cards outstanding that give you either a straight or flush or both. So he opens the betting and gets called. The other player draws two cards and he draws one, discarding the Jack. As he does so, the other guy growls, “If you’re splitting your openers, save that card.”Now the guy is caught. At the end of the hand, whether he wins or loses, he will be required to show a pair of jacks or better among his cards than the discarded card. The other guy is clearly suspicious of him. But he is dealt the Jack of diamonds, which gives him a flush and allows him to win a big hand against the three Aces the other guy held, and he can show a pair of Jacks by turning over the Jack of spades he discarded and pointing to the Jack of diamonds in his hand. He represents that he had been dealt the pair of Jacks, and discarded one of them to get one of the lower diamonds in his hand.If his wife was giving birth while he was playing, he might name his son Jack.

How do I do the equivalent of card counting in five-card draw or Texas hold ’em? What about the other poker games?

“A2A How do I do the equivalent of card counting in Five Card Draw or Texas Hold em? What about the other poker games?”There is no such thing. The whole point behind card counting in blackjack is that they keep using the same deck(s) after each hand, so after a while it becomes useful to know of trends in remaining cards (more face cards, more low cards, etc). In poker, all of the cards are shuffled after every hand, so there’s no information that carries over between one hand and the next.In stud/razz, it is important to keep track of what up-cards other people have been showing in case they fold so that you can know if that affects the odds of you and the remaining players of making their hands, but that scarcely counts as “card counting”, and again it is information that will not carry over between hands.So to answer your question: there is no such thing.

What's the best casual poker game?

Well… there are enough forms of Poker to make your head spin. But, as far as casual games go, I’d say good old Texas Hold’em is certainly one of the best. It’s definitely one of the easiest to learn and fun to play.There are also some interesting variations you can throw in such as crazy pineapple, where you are dealt three hole cards rather than two and you discard one after the flop. (or before, in a different variation)If you have some slightly more experienced players with you then I might recommend PLO. Pot-Limit Omaha is super fun and tons of action. If Hold’em is seems a bit slow or boring and you need some more excitement, PLO is your game. There are a couple key differences in Omaha which make for a vastly different game. The main one is that you are dealt four hole cards, yet you can only use exactly two from your hand, but three from the board to make the best five card hand. It can be overwhelming at first, especially for beginners to Poker so I wouldn’t recommend playing it unless you have a good grasp on Hold’em and Poker in general.Of course Hold’em and PLO are the two most popular these days, but that’s not to say all the older, less popular games aren’t fun anymore. Seven-card stud, Five-card draw, Razz, and some of the split Hi/Lo games are fun as well, they just tend to be a bit more involved and complicated than classic Hold’em.One last game I’ll mention that I enjoy and isn’t too difficult to learn is 2–7 Triple draw. This is a poker game where the goal is to make the lowest possible hand with the lowest card being a deuce. Straights and flushes are high hands so they are no good. The best hand is literally the lowest unpaired, non sequential hand you can get. So, the nut hand is 2–3–4–5–7. You get three draws to discard however many cards you want to shoot for this hand, or as close to it as possible. I generally play it in a fixed-Limit betting format but there are No Limit and Pot Limit variations as well.