I created a new variant of poker - a draw poker variant

Poker Discussion
#1

Hello everyone

I created a new variant of five-card-draw-poker and would like to hear your opinion about it. I tried this variant with my friends severel times in our weekly home game and we had fun with this. It is a tripple draw game. This is how it works: Every player gets five cards face down, followed by the first betting round and the first draw, like in every draw game. But: Every player still left in the game has to show two of his five cards face up after the first draw and this cards can’t be changed in the later draws. Player one draws so many cards like he wants and then he show two cards of his new hand. Than Player two does the same and so on. Then the second betting round follows. After this the players can change any of their three cards left face down in the second draw and have to show one card more face up which also can’t get changed in the third and last draw. After this the third betting round follows, followed by the third draw, in which every player can change any of his two cards left face up. After that he has to show a fourth card so that everyone can see four of the five cards of his opponents. Than the last betting round follows. We played it with pot limit and had much fun with it.

My idea behind it was to revive five-card-draw-poker from which Doyle Brunson wrote it is dead. The problem with the classic five-card-draw-poker is, that you don’t know anything about the hand of your opponents and so have no chance to get away if you have a straight and he a full house for example. This makes it a game in which luck is far more important than skills. Stud poker was created to solve this problem. My idea was to mix draw poker with elements of stud poker without making it to stud poker.
Please let me know what you think about it.

2 Likes
#2

Interesting possibilities. AFTER the first draw is when the first two cards must be shown by every active player, correct? Are those cards shown before or after the betting round? If a player has a pat hand and doesn’t draw in the first draw, does he still have to show cards? Can that pat hand holder then draw cards in the SECOND or THIRD drawing rounds? If a player skips the FIRST or SECOND draw, may he still draw in the THIRD draw? So, ultimately, every active player at the end is showing 4 board cards and has 1 “unknown” card in his hand. It seems there ought to be some real opportunities to construct bluff boards by revealing scare cards, too. Do the open cards from any folded hands stay visible to the remaining active players? That might give away some valuable information or insight as to what cards remain in the deck. Are the folded cards shuffled back into the deck to be drawn again? That could be awkward–tossing the spade 4 on the first draw and getting it back again on the second or third draw! Have you noticed what seemed to be an “average winning hand?”

2 Likes
#3

You have to show your cards always after the draw and before the betting round. If a player doesn’t draw in the first round he still has to show two cards. Of course he can than draw three respectively two cards in later betting rounds but that makes rarely sense. If he has a straight for example and he thinks his opponent might have got a flush it would make more sense to just fold than to gamble crazy to make a miracle better flush or a full house. But you can draw in every draw round all your cards which are still face down in your hand - if you want to pay for it, of course :slight_smile:
Folded cards are out of the game unless maybe, in a round of five or six players (we are only four very tight players so the most hands are heads up), there are not enough cards left to draw. Than the folded and burned cards could get shuffled again. But like in Stud folded hands are mucked. You have to remember the cards that were face up. Of course it would make the game easier if the face up cards were still visible but this would be to easy in my opinion.
From my few home games with my friends I can say that the average winning hand are at least good two pairs, queens up or better. You should start with at least one big pair or a good draw. Draws are very powerfull, especially in position, cause your opponents doesn’t ever know if your draw is completed or not and the odds to get it are higher than in hold’em cause you have three draws and not only two. Little pairs should be avoided, cause even if you make a set it can well happen that your opponent makes a better set. That happened during one home game three time to one single friend of mine who went broke first as result. I don’t know if such things are characteristic for my game or if this was just one crazy evening. Of course he was monstertilted - but won the evening after :slight_smile:

1 Like