Red hot poker

So, was stuck home for a week and a bit recovering from an operation (nothing too serious, just the removal of an internal organ), and after the first few days – when consumption of pain killers meant my attention span was just right for daytime television – I started doing what I always do when I’m bored:  learning about random crap.

This time my random crap of choice involved (amongst other things) poker. 

I’ve never played poker, and I don’t know what the rules are and I don’t have access to the internet at home – but it just so happens I have a book of card games from the early 60s, which includes a description of poker, stud poker and some variation of poker that I’d never heard of before called “Quintet”. 

To be honest, the book is badly written and kind of hard to follow (and yet, it was so popular it had multiple reprintings).  I’m guessing I’d have an easier time of it if I was a) a “proper” card player to begin with and b) more used to reading instructions written in the 50s and 60s.

Anyway, I now know the basics of scoring in poker – what all those “flush” and “full house” things actually mean and that they have a rank, rather than a point value. 

Royal straight flush beats straight flush, which beats fours, which beats full house, which beats flush, which beats straight, which beats threes, which beats two pair, which beats pair, which beats nothing.  A straight with a King as the highest card beats straight with a Queen as the highest card.  Crap like that.

It’s almost like rock-paper-scissors, only you can’t beat a royal straight flush with a pair.  Unless you’re playing misere, in which the player with the worst hand at the end wins the pot.  But that’s not really the same thing.

Then again, maybe you can.  I know there are other versions of poker that aren’t in this book, and maybe one of them says a pair of 2s can beat a Royal Straight Flush.  I’m sure the internet will tell me when I get around to looking it up.

I have no idea if Quintet actually caught on, but it was an attempt by some guy to create a version of poker that could be played by two people.  Apparently poker isn’t worth playing at all unless you have 5-7 players and they all want to bet stakes.

As someone who a) doesn’t even play games to win, let alone playing for “stakes”, and b) doesn’t have very many friends, I’m guessing the odds that I’ll ever play an actual game of poker are slim.

But this Quintet thing was just far too unnecessarily complicated for my liking.  It involves two piquet packs to start off with, and quite frankly I’ve never been bothered with games that involved multiple packs of cards.

So the next post outlines my simplified version, designed using the same principles (a battle of wits between two players using poker scoring), but with less fuss and bother.  It's oddly addictive, even if you're just playing by yourself (right hand vs left hand).