The pots can get large if players pay top dollar in the bidding process. The advantage is if you start off with trash, you can pass on the bidding, fold, and only lose your ante. I don’t generally recommend bluffing in this game since hands have the potential of being very strong come the showdown. It is important to pay attention to what your opponents are bidding on and know whether to get out of their way and stop them from making their hand.

There may be a time when you should outbid an opponent for a card you don’t need just to stop them from having a monster. For example, you have a strong full house–three aces and two tens, and your opponent has already bought a king and is bidding on another king. At this point you know the last king probably made him trips or a full house, which your hand trumps, but this new king would give him four-of-a-kind. This is when the game can get nasty since both you and your opponent are willing to spend a small fortune bidding on the card. There is a lot to think about, but in a different way then most poker variations, and that’s why I like bid poker.

You may have heard of Follow the Queen, a wild card stud game. The idea is after a couple hole cards, each player is dealt a card up followed by a round of betting. If a queen is dealt to a player, then the following card to the next player is wild. If no queens show, then queens are wild. The game allows for four wild cards in the deck.

With only four wild cards the integrity of poker can stand in my opinion­—meaning skill is still a large part of the game. Our version used a total of eight wilds, we played follow the king and queen. Then we added another twist. If the two of clubs was dealt up to any player the deck was shuffled again and we started over with any players that had not previously folded. Occasionally we even allowed for the two of clubs’ power to be used when dealt as a player’s hole card at the discretion of the player who had it.

I doubt any self-respecting poker pro would give said game a chance, but it was a fun diversion from more serious games. We called it, Follow the King and Queen through downtown Chicago.

Liar’s poker is also a popular bar game that only requires a dollar bill to play. In the place of cards, the eight-digit serial number on the dollar bill (see below is blue) represents each “hand.” The object is similar to the card version–to make the highest bid of a number that does not exceed the combined total held by all the players. The numbers are usually ranked in the following order: 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 0 (10) and 1 (Ace). For example, if the first player bids three 4′s, he is predicting there are at least three 4′s among all the players, including himself. The next player can bid a higher number at that level (three 5′s), any number at a higher level (four 2′s) or challenge. The end of the game is reached when a player makes a bid that is challenged all around. If the bid is successful, he wins a dollar from each of the other players, but if the bid is unsuccessful, he loses a dollar to each of the other players.

Both games are fun diversions that combine statistical reasoning with bluffing. The barrier of entry is small in that the most you can lose is a matter of dollars and cents. However, for you high rollers, currency substitutions are always an option.

If you practice any other variations on Liars Poker let me know in the comments. This is one game that can easily vary in rules.

The regret is when you realize your discard has become wild, which seems to happen at a rate that far exceeds its statistical probability.

Game tip: Knowing the future holds a few wilds, regardless of what they are, consider drawing to bigger hands than usual. Three of a kind may no hold up in this showdown, draw to a flush or a full house.

Five Card Regret isn’t the most inventive came in the world, or the most fair. But as with all my blogger’s choice hands, it breaks up the monotony of constant hold’em. It may not help your bankroll, but it may improve your humor.

Cheat Night: (n.) Night in which it is understood by all that no lasting punishments will be issued for foul-play. The rules are as follows: Let all players know beforehand (preferably with 24-hour notice) that a Cheat Night will be held. Proceed with your poker game as normal. If a player catches another player cheating and calls him or her out, the offending player mucks his hand. Each player can call for a card count no more than twice each Cheat Night.

Sooo…is there a point to all this? Yes. The usual player wastes most of their suspicion on Internet card rooms and saves little for in person game play. Your friends likely shift their attention from their cards, to other player’s faces for a read, over to the TV and back again. This exercise gets people looking at the deck, other player’s cards and gets their suspicion running wild. Their healthy suspicion. Cheat Night is a wake up call. It is a call to arms to prepare you for the real world. It gets you thinking like a cheater.

The importance of the 24-hour notice is that it gives your frienemies time to bring their own cold decks, enter uneasy partnerships for collusion and whatever other preperations they see fit. It is important not to get found out because if you have to muck, you loose whatever investment you had in the pot. This also shows why it is important to play for real money. I suggest your usual stakes. The card count rule is important in case you suspect a player of hording cards from past hands. It is also important to limit the amount of times one can confirm a 52 card deck or it would happen every hand.

Poker would cease to be fun if every night became Cheat Night, but if you have an adventurous crowd it could become the most fun night of the year. I do recommend setting up at least two Cheat Nights. Players will get idea from other players and will be considerably better cheats the second night.

A couple tips: Don’t use your best cards as they may get marked. Don’t assume whoever doesn’t get called out for cheating opted out of cheating, it is likely that he or she is the best cheater. If you are dealt a statistically unlikely good hand and are re-raised, consider folding as you were probably the mark for a set deck.

The fun starts with five cards to each player and five community cards down. Each community card is turned up individually followed by a betting round. It is easy to screw-up with the three-card reveal, that’s what we’re used to.  After the third betting round, players must discard three cards from their hand. Players make the best hand from the five community cards and the two remaining of their own.

If you have read my previous game variant posts, you know why I both love and hate this game. It has the element of regret. Chances are you will curse yourself for choosing the wrong three cards to dump before seeing the last two community gems, but se la vi. That’s poker.

Like most card games, there are different variations of Guts. My favorite keeps it simple, two-card Guts. The betting beings with an ante. Everyone is dealt two cards down and the players review their hand. The hand strength ranges from a pair of aces being he strongest down to a 3 high card being the weakest. The players then declare whether they are in or out for the round. Declarations must be made by all players and at the same time. This is usually done by players holding their hands out, opening them at the same time, and revealing either a chip (meaning in) or an empty palm. The players who are in showdown their hands. The best hand takes the pot, all losers match the pot. The players who opted out only lose their ante. A new round follows with all players anteing, declaring and showing down once more.

This game is an exercise in escalation. As players stay in and rounds roll over, the pots become huge. To illustrate, an example: If the game has seven players anteing a dollar each, the pot begins at $7. Three players declare in, meaning two will lose. They each pay the pot $7 while the winner takes $7. Round two, everyone antes. The pot is now $21. If round two has 4 players in, the pot will be $70 going into round three. I’ve seen rounds go up to eight and I barely ever play Guts.

It’s hard to appreciate the fortunes won and lost at this game unless you play, but please keep it small. If you are used to putting $50 on the line, I wouldn’t start with antes over a quarter. You’ll be at $50 in no time. Keep in mind the game doesn’t end until only one player declares in, giving the player with the most disposable income a considerable advantage.

My own preference aside, Blind Man’s Bluff is a fitting name. Bluffing is the name of the game, but instead of making your opponents believe you are strong, you need to make them believe that they are weak. They know your strength more than you do, but not relative to themselves.

It is a fun game to watch because most games are played out with the cards on the player’s forehead, however, onlookers change the game by their reactions. I would argue this form of poker relies more heavily on tells than any other. If I have an ace of spades on my forehead, I’m unbeatable, but I could still be convinced to fold with good acting. Often in cases with an ace in play, players seem to come together in an effort to make the ace fold. As a general rule, if people start laughing at you, you either have a two or an ace.

The Bizarro Family of poker can be extended. You could play stud or hold’em with one or more cards visible to everyone but yourself. Experiment to find what you like best, but to me, anything more then Bizarro Highcard gets confusing.

The first step to making your own game is to choose the type of poker play. The most popular choices are stud games, draw games, or community card games. From there you can decide how many cards to use and how they are distributed. All that really matters is that you keep all the players on a fair, equal playing field.

The easiest way to mix-up any game is by adding wilds. This will seemingly elevate your average hand strength, but relative to the rest of the table, winning rates should stay about the same. The most popular cards to have as wilds are aces, deuces, One-Eyed Jacks, Suicidal Kings, and of course Jokers. You can also let the game play decide what cards are wild. For example, the river card could be wild or even one card could make another card wild as in Follow the Queen games. I’ve played games in which entire suits were made wild. but that may have been going to far.

To keep games active, I like to have multiple betting rounds. With games that the cards are slowly made available to the players, (like hold’em with the flop, turn and river) betting rounds are nicely built-in. You may design a game where this isn’t the case and the entirety of the player’s hand is known at the outset. If this is the case, I add betting rounds by having players roll-out their hands. If you don’t know this term, it is when you arrange your cards in the order you want to reveal them to the rest of the table and bet in between reveals. As you may have guessed, there is an extra layer of strategy involved with the roll-out.

The final step is important. Name your game. You can name it after the creator or its inspiration or anything you want. If it is a popular variation, people will want to play it again and it is no fun referring to it as “that game with the thing that Bob came up last week.”

If you have come up with any fun game variants of your own, leave them in the comments! I’m always up for trying new ways to play the game of poker.

Although lottery too is a way of gambling, people prefer thinking of the national lottery is a poor man’s wildest dreams come true.

Anaconda belongs to the same family as Five Card Regret in my book. It involves decisions you may wish you could take back. The play proceeds as follows: Each player is dealt six cards down. You bet based on your hand. Then you pick three cards to pass to the player on your left as you receive three from your right. Betting round. Then you “pass the trash” again, this time two cards to your neighbor on the left and two from your right. Betting round. Finally, one more card is passed in the same fashion. The best five card hand wins. This game allows for eight players total, nine if you add two wild cards.

Logic says to pass your least promising cards—2s, 3s, and the like—but chances are that will be what the player to the right gives you. You’ll be giving up on pairs or trips this way, hence the regret. I suggest that you hold on to weak cards in this game when the player to your right is unfamiliar with the game to avoid the heartache.

The game becomes more fun when you play with the same people and you can try to predict how your opponents will treat each other. When I pass a card, lets say a four, to my left during the first pass and the player to my right passes me another four…I’m faced with a dilemma. The regret has already set in, I’ve missed a chance at a pair. More than that, now I have a four again, which is useless to me, but I don’t want to pass it knowing that the player to my left my still have my previous pass. Do I hold on to a useless card and pass another card which is more likely to improve my hand, or do I pass the trash and likely improve my opponent’s hand? That is one of the many questions of Anaconda.