How to Spice up a Poker Game

Everyone knows how to play poker. But regular old poker gets boring after a while. Why not try mixing it up a bit with a few new suggestions?

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

1. Swap the hidden and the revealed. If you are playing stud poker, play with each player's hand face-up, but one hidden card in the middle for each player. Players can only look at one face-down card of their choice.

2. Allow money to be used for other things than betting. What if players could pay money into the pot to look at a second card in the example above? Or what if you could pay another player a few chips to look at a random card in their hand?

3. Trade cards around. Rather than just drawing, allow players to either trade cards directly with each other, or pass cards to the left each round, as in Hearts.

4. Mix it all up with Dealer's Choice. Once you've found a few good variants to make the game more interesting, alternate between them by letting the dealer choose the rules each round.

Tips & Warnings

• When testing a new variant among friends, it is better to first play it for fun, and not for money, in case there is any confusion.
• Some players dislike change, and only want to play standard poker. This is generally because standard poker is their best chance of taking your money.