Torgen
09-27-2004, 09:24 PM
A not-quite novelty item some of you may have seen is the six-suited deck of cards, which adds Crowns (red) and Anchors (black) to the existing four suits to make a deck more suitable for larger player counts in some games, such as Rummy and Hearts. (3-partnership Bridge seems like a particularly mind-bending application.)
They don't suggest Poker as being a game well-suited to adaptation in this way, although it's obviously possible to make a version which would use such a deck effectively. It does seem clear that the difference in the 5-card hand would be too small to make such a variation particularly interesting, since the only addition to the hand-ranking chart would be quints, which still wouldn't beat a straight flush. (Plus, there's already a sentiment that quads "don't exist" for all practical purposes.) The five card hand is a holdover from the 20-card, 4-player version, but when you look at it as being (number of suits) + 1, a seven-card hand could be considered the natural extension for the 6-suited game. Then the hand rankings would be:
Straight Flush (48 ways)
6-of-a-kind (936 ways)
Flush (10248 ways)
Quints-plus-Pair (14040 ways)
Quads-plus-Trips (46800 ways)
Quints (185328 ways)
Two-Trips (2059200 ways)
Straight (2239480 ways)
Quads-plus-Pair (2316600 ways)
Trips-plus-Two-Pair (3861000 ways)
Quads (9266400 ways)
Trips-plus-Pair (9266400 ways)
Three-Pair (57915000 ways)
Trips (166795200 ways)
Two-Pair (625482000 ways)
One-Pair (1200925440 ways)
High Card (561518000 ways)
Someone care to check my arithmetic?
There are oddities, such as Trips-plus-Pair and Quads having the same likelihood; It was an arbitrary choice to make Quads a higher hand here. Also, as in 4-suit poker where you use the best 5 of 7 cards, like Stud and Hold'em, a pair is more likely than high card, but for the obvious reason, a pair is scored higher.
Of course, we're not playing draw with this chart. I expect that the stud variation would use 10 cards (three down, one up to start, then two streets of two more up, then a last street of one up, one down, perhaps), the Hold'em variation would have three pocket cards and 7 community cards, with a 4-card flop and 3 subsequent 1-card streets, and Omaha would have 6 in the pocket (must use 3) and a similar community card structure to our Hold'em variation (must use 4).
Now, with the rules set out thusly, we could all start playing these variations today (if we had the cards; more likely we'd have to order them in before we got started), but what sort of strategies would we use? For example, flushes are so difficult to get that suitedness is negligible in starting hand selection, and while Straights are much easier to get by comparison, are they still so hard to come by that 6-7-8 is unplayable, even when suited? Does this make starting hand selection come down basically to high pocket pairs or pocket trips? Or does seeing a total of 10 cards (or 13, in our version of Omaha) increase the straight or flush odds enough that other hands become playable? (Feel free to calculate the chart for hand probabilities having seen 10 cards -- I'm sure as hell not going to.)
They don't suggest Poker as being a game well-suited to adaptation in this way, although it's obviously possible to make a version which would use such a deck effectively. It does seem clear that the difference in the 5-card hand would be too small to make such a variation particularly interesting, since the only addition to the hand-ranking chart would be quints, which still wouldn't beat a straight flush. (Plus, there's already a sentiment that quads "don't exist" for all practical purposes.) The five card hand is a holdover from the 20-card, 4-player version, but when you look at it as being (number of suits) + 1, a seven-card hand could be considered the natural extension for the 6-suited game. Then the hand rankings would be:
Straight Flush (48 ways)
6-of-a-kind (936 ways)
Flush (10248 ways)
Quints-plus-Pair (14040 ways)
Quads-plus-Trips (46800 ways)
Quints (185328 ways)
Two-Trips (2059200 ways)
Straight (2239480 ways)
Quads-plus-Pair (2316600 ways)
Trips-plus-Two-Pair (3861000 ways)
Quads (9266400 ways)
Trips-plus-Pair (9266400 ways)
Three-Pair (57915000 ways)
Trips (166795200 ways)
Two-Pair (625482000 ways)
One-Pair (1200925440 ways)
High Card (561518000 ways)
Someone care to check my arithmetic?
There are oddities, such as Trips-plus-Pair and Quads having the same likelihood; It was an arbitrary choice to make Quads a higher hand here. Also, as in 4-suit poker where you use the best 5 of 7 cards, like Stud and Hold'em, a pair is more likely than high card, but for the obvious reason, a pair is scored higher.
Of course, we're not playing draw with this chart. I expect that the stud variation would use 10 cards (three down, one up to start, then two streets of two more up, then a last street of one up, one down, perhaps), the Hold'em variation would have three pocket cards and 7 community cards, with a 4-card flop and 3 subsequent 1-card streets, and Omaha would have 6 in the pocket (must use 3) and a similar community card structure to our Hold'em variation (must use 4).
Now, with the rules set out thusly, we could all start playing these variations today (if we had the cards; more likely we'd have to order them in before we got started), but what sort of strategies would we use? For example, flushes are so difficult to get that suitedness is negligible in starting hand selection, and while Straights are much easier to get by comparison, are they still so hard to come by that 6-7-8 is unplayable, even when suited? Does this make starting hand selection come down basically to high pocket pairs or pocket trips? Or does seeing a total of 10 cards (or 13, in our version of Omaha) increase the straight or flush odds enough that other hands become playable? (Feel free to calculate the chart for hand probabilities having seen 10 cards -- I'm sure as hell not going to.)