Poker rules V
September 19th, 2008Special or freak hands in poker games are recognized and allowed by many houses although the official poker hand rules don’t accept them as standard. Among several such special hands, one is the wrap-around straight hand where the player has an ace card of either high or low value among the consecutive cards in his hand. A flash hand consists of four different cards, each representing different suits, and a joker card, while a hand of only jack, queen or king cards is a blazer hand. When all five cards are of same color, then it is a russ hand and holding a flush house means having two different suit of cards, in three and two distribution. When a player has four cards of same suit, it is bobtail flush or bobtail straight if the cards are in sequence.
Some poker games are played with truncated decks making flush a better hand than a full house. For example, Mexican stud has no 8, 9 or 10 cards whereas the Australian version of manila poker has only 32 playing cards with no cards of rank 6,5,4,3 or 2.
Cats and dogs consists of three ‘kicker’ cards, and the ‘cat’ and ‘dog’ standing for no-pair hands of highest and lowest value. So a hand with a 7 card as high and a 2 card as low is the little dog hand; when an ace is the highest and a 9 card us the lowest, it is a big dog; for little cat hand, the high is an 8 card and low is a 3 card; and when a king is the highest and an 8 card lowest, it is a big cat. The hierarchy of cat and dog hands is little dog, big dog, little cat and big cat in ascending order of ranking. Sometimes a hand of big cat flush is considered the best possible hand. Often when the house allows cats and dogs, no other freak hands are permitted in play.
