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Home Games of Community Card Poker

Not all community card poker games are played in posh casinos or gambling houses. When there is one in the family that knows poker, especially the variants of community card poker, then there will be home games. The existence of home games is an outlet for human creativity. That is, there will be variations and modifications applied to the known and established community card poker games. These become ad-hoc games.

Ad-hoc games, even when they are products of creativity, do not necessarily meet the strict balance standards implemented by casinos. Thus, the ad-hoc games are suited to low-stakes games. With high-stakes, there might be a question of "fairness". Still, these ad-hoc games are beginning to become popular and accepted. One of them, the Tic Tac Toe, is evenly played in some casinos.

Here are some of the popular home games:

� Cincinnati - With five personal cards, and five community cards, a poker player can form more possible hands than any other poker variant. There are five betting rounds in this home game.

� Iron Cross - This home game is named after the way the board is formed. That is, the five community cards are arranged to form a cross, with the fifth last dealt card placed at the center. To form a hand, the poker player must utilize three community cards, but these community cards must be aligned either vertically or horizontally.

� Tic Tac Toe - This home game, like the Iron Cross, is based on the way the community cards are arranged on the board. There will be nine community cards that form a 3 x 3 square. Using two personal cards, a player must use three cards from the board. These three cards must be aligned vertically, horizontally, or diagonally. Such arrangement makes this home game similar to the usual game of tic tac toe.

� Lame-brain Pete - The most unique feature of this home game is the assigned wild card. From among the four community cards, the one which is ranked lowest (and all other cards of the same rank) becomes the wild card. This implies that in some games, the wild card will be revealed only when the last community card is shown.

� Six-pack - The name of this home game refers to the number of community cards that are arranged on the board. There will be six community cards while each poker player will have two personal cards. The six community cards are arranged in a circular position. And the poker player will choose three of these community cards that will combine with his two personal cards. The catch is that the poker player will choose three cards that are adjacent to each other.