Deal me in
9 March 2007
By Mark Pilarski
Dear Mark: In any poker game, are additional
cards like a kicker ever used after your five
cards are ranked? For instance, two players
share four cards on the board, and one of cards
in their two-card hand is the same, both
creating identical straights. If player A has an
Ace as his other down card, and player B has a
Queen, do you know of any instance where the Ace
of player A would be used to settle a tie? Do
suits ever settle a tie? Are there any games
that use additional cards? Jerry C.
The standard answer is no. All 5-card poker
hands consist of just five cards. When
additional cards are available, such as in
Hold'em, players combine individually dealt
cards with a number of "community cards" that
are dealt face up and shared by all players.
Each player then attempts to compose the best
five-card poker hand using the community cards
and the player's own face-down cards. After a
player decides on a five-card subset, it is then
compared to the five-card hands of the other
players and ranked according to the rules of the
game. The remaining cards are of no consequence
in determining the winner.
So, Jerry, that additional ace in Player A's
pocket would only come into play if he or she
could use it for a Broadway, which is an
Ace-high straight (TJQKA) odd suit. Suits
wouldn't settle like hands because they
typically have no value, unless they are used to
determine whether a hand fits a certain
category, specifically a flush or straight
flush.
One game that does come to mind that offers the
use of more than five cards is Pai Gow or
Double-handed poker. The object of Pai Gow poker
is for a player to create two poker hands out of
the seven cards in his hand: a five-card poker
hand and a two-card poker hand. Played with a
single 52-card deck and a lone joker, the game
uses typical hand rankings, and the five-card
hand must rank higher than the two-card hand.
Dear Mark: Possibly you can help me with this
question. Years ago I heard somewhere of a game
called Spit poker. I don't remember where I
first learned of it, or any of its rules. Any
ideas? I would like to add it to our weekly
poker game. Sam J.
Inferring, Sam, that we're on the same page,
it's not Spit, but Spit in the Ocean poker, and
it more or less goes like this. Spit in the
Ocean is a community-draw game where each player
is dealt four cards and one additional is
flipped from the top of the deck. This card is
known as the "spit" card and is the fifth card
for everyone's hand, a community card.
Another variation is that each player is dealt
four down cards one at a time, unless the player
on dealer's right yells "spit," then a center
community card is immediately dealt face up. The
community "spit" card and all other
non-community cards of the same ranking then
become wild cards.
Your source, Sam, conceivably could have been
singer Ray Stevens, who references Spit in the
Ocean in a song called Shriner's Convention.
"Matters of grave concern were weighed with
dedicated caution
Like whether or not to raise at stud or draw or
spit in the ocean."
Gambling Wisdom of the Week:
"I know logically, that the only way to truly
win at video poker is to always consider all the
factors, and to always play as close to perfect
on the right machines as you can. In short, you
have to work at winning. I just don't want to
work when I'm in a casino, I want to play."
--Melissa Cook (Strictly Slots)
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