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Wild & Crazy

We’re not going to teach you anything useful about real poker. That’s somebody else’s job. We’re more interested in showing you how to have fun with some wild and crazy ways to play poker.

Speaking of wildness, let’s talk about wild cards. The concept of wild cards dates back to the mythical Old West, where poker was supposedly born. Back then, it was enough to just call a card wild and start dealing. This led to such timeless classics as Deuces Wild. But these days, everything needs a theme. Deuces Wild? What kind of a theme is that?

The first stop on the theme train is Dr. Pepper, a 7-Stud game where 2s, 4s, and 10s are wild. Do you have any idea why? Neither did we, until we looked it up. About 80 years ago, Dr. Pepper added a cryptic “10-2-4” to its logo, quietly encouraging its patrons to drink a pick-me-up at the three low-energy points in the day: 10:00, 2:00, and 4:00. Good advice: You’ll need an energy boost to play a game with twelve wild cards.

Here’s another old favorite, Woolworth, a.k.a. Five and Dime. In this one, you have to pay for your wild cards, which seems like a step in the right direction. Fives and Tens are wild, and adjusted for inflation, they’ll cost you $1 and $2 respectively. Or, if you like, a nickel and a dime.

If fixed rates aren’t your thing, try charging more for each wild card. In Heinz 57 (is there an ancient brand that isn’t a poker game?), 5s and 7s are wild. But when you get one faceup, you’ve got to match the pot or fold. Just remember your dismal pot odds when do this. You match the pot, and no one else pays a thing.

Here’s our favorite way to pay for wild cards, a new game called Show Your Hole, invented by our buddy Galen. It’s 7-Card Stud, with deuces and treys wild. If you get a wild card faceup, you have to turn over one of your hole cards, or fold. This means if you’re dealt three wild cards face up, you’re forced to fold. Pretty nasty, but really, who wants to lose to the guy with three wild cards?

Strategy: Okay, we couldn’t resist a tiny nugget of strategy. As you know, wild cardsin the game make better hands in the showdown. How much better? Our flimsy research points to this rule of thumb: The rank of the average winning hand will increase by one level (from two pair to trips, for example) for every two wild cards in the game. For example, making deuces and treys wild adds a total of 8 wild cards, so if the average winning hand is normally trips, expect it to go up to four of a kind.

You can learn 200 other strange games and a lot more in Dealer’s Choice: The Complete Handbook to Saturday Night Poker (Overlook Press, by James and Mike with Phil Foglio).

 

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