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5 Variations of Five Card Draw You Should Try

The game of 5 card draw is one of the oldest forms of poker in the world. Until recently, the game was primarily only found in home games but now regular draw poker and lowball poker are often found online and in some casinos. If neither of those versions is to your liking, there are multiple fun and interesting poker game variations to draw poker that you could try. Let’s take a quick look at some of them.

Baseball

Baseball draw poker is a game that has a high degree of luck. In this game, threes and nines are wild and if you have a four in your hand, you can show the four and exchange it for a new card. The game is called baseball because there are three outs in an inning of baseball and nine innings in a game.

For this type of poker game, you can forget playing anything lower than a straight. Unless you are heads-up in a hand, the chances of three of a kind or better winning consistently is low. This game has a lot of variance due to there being eight wild cards and the added drawing potential for an exposed four. Unless you are playing this game for low stakes, this is not a good gambling game.

Wild Card Variations

You will see numerous wild card game variations of draw poker if you play in enough home games. The first and most common besides jokers wild are deuces wild. Essentially, all deuces in the deck are wild. The next common variation is one-eyed jacks or suicide kings wild. A one-eyed-jack is one of the two jacks with only one eye showing. A suicide king is one of the two kings that have the sword sticking in their head.

To discourage cheating, sometimes a wild card is declared after the cards are dealt and by cutting the card to show what is wild. Sometimes the deck is passed to a player to the left for the cut of the wild card. On some occasions, you will see games where the bottom card on the deck is the wild card. Be careful with these games as they can be setups for cheating for the unobservant.

Five Card Draw with Joker

The one draw variant that you may occasionally see in casinos and online is 5 card draw with the joker. Depending on whether you play in a home game or online, the game is played with one, two, or four jokers in the deck. The online and casino version of the game is commonly played with one joker.

In this case, the Joke helps to make a wheel.

In the casino and online version of the game, the joker is not a true wild card but instead can be used either to represent a straight, or to complete a straight or flush. If you have a hand like Ac-2c-5c-8d and a joker, you have a pair of aces. However, 4c-5c-6d-7c and a joker would be a straight.

You will commonly see jokers used as straight wild cards in home games, meaning that these cards can be used for anything. When you play in games where jokers are completely wild, you need to be careful with hands below a straight as big hands are going to be much more frequent.

Double and Triple Draw Poker

Although rare, some low stakes games will incorporate a double draw or a triple draw format to the game. These games are played just like five-card draw and without wild cards with the exception that the players either have two or three draws. When the deck runs out of cards, the discarded cards are shuffled and used to continue issuing new cards

With these types of games, you are going to see more big hands due to the fact that players get two or three shots at catching cards. Typically hands lower than a straight will not fare well in multi-way pots.

The above game variations are the most common that you will see in five-card draw games. Remember that many of these games are usually not going to be played for any serious money and will have a lot of variance. They are mainly played for fun and to give players something different than plain vanilla draw poker.

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