Also, Mutual of Omaha. Maybe Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom? But then I'd just be sorely tempted to bend it back around to the Cat Dancer again. Shoot man I don't know.
i've already described texas hold 'em so here comes the rest of 'em
Omaha hold 'em, like its Texan cousin, consisted of five open-knowledge community cards, and a few closed-secret personal cards, a complete hand being made up of a selection of five of those cards and best hand taking all. The personal cards in the hole were double in number this time; the best hand of five was to be selected from but two of the player's four personal cards, and three of the community cards as in Texan. With an increased number of cards in play, there were more options to choose from, more hands possible than in Texas-style hold 'em- which meant that everyone had the ability to get better hands, making the bid less certain this time around. It certainly amped things up.
The interaction between particular hole cards and community cards became important. You would choose from your personal cards those two that fit best with three of the five cards on the table, to make ideally the best poker hand possible from the options available; there would usually be more than one. The rule remained that the hand of five needed to be made of two and only two of the hole cards and three and exactly three of the community cards, no picking and choosing beyond that. If you had all four aces in the hole, you'd only be able to use two of them to make your complete hand, which is just too bad- but at least you know that no other player is holding any aces. Having more cards in play in general meant more information on what cards the others would or would not have. Just like in Texas hold 'em, there was a flop of three cards, and a turn and a river of one card each. Unwin folded after the flop here, his eyes on Lone Wolf Dreaded Eye, prodding for any tells.
The community poker rounds were over, and Unwin had managed to pull ahead a bit, but not as much as he'd hoped. The Wicked Stepmother played a strong hand, of course, and he could only muscle by here through luck. She was beginning to suspect his bluff strategy, feel him out, but at least it was time for the stud poker games, being played here with fixed limit bidding. A player couldn't decide here what to bid, only whether to bid, and the bid amount was set; this bidding form better fit the way stud pokers are played.
The first player of any round didn't continue in a circle around the table in these versions, but started with the player who had a certain valued door card, the door or "window" card being the player's first visible card dealt face-up-- the primary distinction of stud poker is that not all of a player's personal cards would be kept secret, but that some are dealt face-up. No cards belonged to the community, all cards were properties of the individual, and the information of what cards were out there would come from your cards, the other player's face-up cards, and how everyone bid. This was ramping up the difficulty, but stud poker was Unwin's home town.
There were three stud poker games in this HORSE tournament: starting out with Razz, which is a game where the lowest hand reigns and not highest; Seven Card Stud next, which is where the highest hand wins and not the lowest; and, coming at the tail end before the final auction, Eight or Better, a seven-card stud "high-or-low" variation where the winning pot would be split at the end of a hand, between the highest- and the lowest- handed players. In all three of these stud games, each player would receive a flop of three cards, the first two face-down the third face-up; those who held to the end would receive four more cards each, one at a time, in a succession of bidding rounds; the fourth through sixth "streets" dealt face-up, the river dealt face down. In the end, one would know half his opponent's cards, which is a lot of information but not enough to make things easy. Maybe their hands would appear weaker than they truly were.
The third round of five hands was Razz. Because of its nature, the lowest-valued hand winning instead of the highest, the first player to bid would be the person who had the lowest-valued card revealed. Aces low. Straights and flushes, mercifully, do not count. The best possible hand would thus be Ace through five, though it's the lowest hand that wins, without qualification, so if everyone else's hand is "better" than yours, your hand would thus still win, in a game of Razz.
Especially in comparison to Razz and Eight or Better, Seven card stud is a straightforward game of stud poker. Same pointing rules as the first two rounds that they had played, nothing fancy with low cards or anything. Straightforward, no frills, a solid gimmickless game of poker. Unwin was in heaven. It reminded him of his childhood, growing up after the second world war but before the cold war really kicked in, learning how to grift and discovering his love of keeping secrets. This is where he learned poker. And seven card stud was his kingdom.
Eight or better, or more technically the ridiculously unwieldy name of "seven card stud high-low split eight or better," was a variation of seven card stud, played with seven cards- that is, the eight in the name isn't a description of the number of cards dealt to each player, but rather, the "eight or better" in the name signified that having an 8 card or higher in one's hand disqualified a player from having the low hand of the round. If there was no qualified low hand for the round, the high hand took the entire pot instead of having to split it evenly between the two. This proved to be a very pleasant surprise when Unwin took the entire pot with two-pair sevens and jacks high hand, first round of eight-or-better, the mage playboy (who had apparently never played the variant before) losing his hand of attempted low cards due to this rule. It was not so much a technicality, because it was right there in the name. It wasn't even the best strategy to go high hand, in this game, since it was so much easier reading the other player's eligibility playing for the low. Even in skill-based games, sometimes it did come down to plain luck.
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