How to Play Wolfie's Lou Poker

Wolfie’s Lou Poker is an interesting game that combines Liar’s Poker, Draw Poker, Euchre, and Bridge. It is a game for the serious card player, though, as it has several steps before a winner can be determined. If there are many players “declaring in” for the hand, it is likely several players will lose, but nobody will win in a single deal of the hand. This results in some rather large pots in a game of Wolfie’s Lou Poker. This is a game that serious poker players oppose playing, but card players in general love.

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Playing cards
• Poker table, poker tabletop or standard table
• Chairs
• Poker chips
• Six players

The Deal and Declaring Trump

1. Organize an evening of Wolfie’s Lou Poker. Unlike many home poker games, if you are going to play Wolfie’s Lou Poker, it is the only poker variation that should be played that night. You can have up to seven players for an evening of Wolfie’s Lou Poker, and it is not recommended to play with fewer than six players.

2. Ante if this is the first hand of the night, or only one person “declared in” for the previous hand.

3. Deal five facedown cards to each player. After everyone has received their five face cards, each player may look at his own cards.

4. Each player has the option to discard up to two cards from their hand and receive an equal number of cards from the deck.

5. Decide if you will “declare in” for the hand. To do this, each player puts a closed fist over the center of the table. The players who want to play their hand put a poker chip in their hand, those that don’t leave their hand empty. Each player opens their hand and it is determined how many players are playing the hand based on who “declared in.”

6. Determine who has the best poker hand. Players must be honest during this declaration. Start with asking “Who can beat one pair?” and continue moving up the ranking of poker hands until no player can beat the announced hand ranking. The last player who was able to defeat the announced hand gets to declare trump.

Playing the Hand

7. Declare trump. The player who had the highest announced poker hand now declares the trump suit. Trump is a suit that can defeat any other suit when playing a trick-taking game. There will be five rounds of tricks in Wolfie’s Lou Poker. At this point, Wolfie’s Lou Poker transforms into a Euchre game instead of a poker game. The player can declare a suit as trump, that there is no trump in the hand, or “reverse trump.” Reverse trump means that the ranking of all the cards is reversed for the tricks.

8. Lead the first card. The player who declared trump now leads the first card to the first trick. If a player does not have the suit that was led he can play any card he wishes. If there is a suit declared as trump, that suit can defeat the suit led. You must follow suit if you have a card in the suit that was led, and can only play trump if you are void in the led suit.

9. Determine who wins the trick. The trick is won by whoever played the highest card of the suit led if there were no trump cards played during the trick or you are playing with no trump suit. Otherwise the highest trump card played wins the trick. The player who won the trick, leads the next trick.

10. Repeat until all five tricks have been played. If any player wins three tricks, that player wins the pot.

11. Pay the penalty. If a player “declared in” but did not take three tricks, he must pay a penalty equal to the pot into the next hand’s pot. It is possible no player wins three tricks, and then all players must pay the penalty.

12. Collect everyone’s cards, and deal the next hand. If only one player “declared in” for the previous hand, each player must ante again.

Tips & Warnings

• Wolfie’s Lou Poker is more of a Euchre game than it is a poker game. The only part that poker plays in Wolfie’s Lou Poker is determining who has the right to declare trump. This is a very powerful advantage to have in the hand.
• If you find out that a player plays a trump card to a trick but had a card of that suit, the player cannot win the pot at the end of the hand. In addition, that person is the only one who has to pay the penalty for the hand, even if other players took less than three tricks. This penalty is severe, because that player was caught cheating. The penalty is five times the pot value.