Thoughghbreds and the dead man's hand

 Copied part of this post from my other blog "poker games from the shed"  Alternative poker games

All modern Thoroughbred race hoses trace back to three stallions imported into England from the Middle East in the late 17th and early 18th centuries: the Byerley Turk (1680s), the Darley Arabian (1704), and the Godolphin Arabian (1729).

The current Mrs Shed and myself have been lucky enough to go to the Irish National Stud and a racing stables in Louisville (Kentucky). What have Kentucky and Ireland got in common?  The weather. Both have very long spring's and Autumn's which apparently is ideal for training race horses. Both great places to go.  Also recommend going to the Louisville slugger museum where you see them make baseball bats. We gave the world's biggest machine gun fest a miss, but did enjoy going round Jim Beam. (Probably not a good idea doing both the above on the same day.) Couldn't find Colonel Sanders, or a tourist attraction about the worlds biggest purveyor of cooked poultry though. (Coke does further south, again worth a visit)

 

Now as you know I blog about poker on "the other blog" as parliament would say. These are all games we play at my local hostelry. We play "dealer choice" games, ie the dealer picks the next game, which vary enormously in style and complexity. To make a good and playable new dealers choice game, (in my opinion)  it needs a known base game with probably just one change. My new games are colloquially known as games from the Shed, as it is suspected I spend far too long their "developing" them.

Now the majority of poker games are based on 3 styles of games:

 

Hold'em esq (community card games). Dealt "hole" cards to players with community cards in the centre. Texas hold'em being the most obvious example. These games have proved very good raw material in which to take into the shed and modify.

 

Another "style" of poker is "Draw" poker. Which basically has NO community cards and each player makes the best hand from what is in front of them. Five card draw is one of the most common types of poker. Each player is dealt five cards, then a round of betting follows. Then each player may discard up to 3 cards and get back (from the deck) as many cards as he/she discarded. Round of betting then show. This game has flirted with the shed and has potential for more Shedisatuion.

 

The final and I believe oldest style of poker game is Stud Poker. 

Like draw there is no community cards. The number of cards and how many are shown face up that define the game. Each time players get more cards, usually in ones or twos, there is a round of betting with the the show after the final round.

 

We will discuss conventional and "Shedded" modification at a later date.

 

This was popular in the "wild west" It is believed Wild Bill Hickok was playing Stud (Some say draw) poker. He usually sat with his back to a wall so he could see the entrance, but the only seat available when he joined the game was a chair facing away from the door. He twice asked another man at the table, Charles Rich, to change seats with him, but Rich refused. Jack McCall entered the saloon, walked up behind Hickok, drew his Colt revolver, and shouted, "Damn you! Take that!" before shooting Hickok in the back of the head at point-blank range.

Hickok died instantly. Hickok may have told his friend Charlie Utter and others who were travelling with them that he thought he would be killed while in Deadwood. As an aside you need to watch Deadwood the TV series which has this scene in it.

Hickok was playing five-card stud or five-card draw when he was shot. He was holding two pairs: black aces and black eights (although there is some dispute as to the suit of one of the aces, diamond vs. spade) as his "up cards", which has since become widely known as the "dead man's hand". The identity of the fifth card (his "hole card") is also the subject of debate. 

 

Again we will mine this rich vain in the future.

As this is a general ( why not lieutenant) ramble around poker styles we won't discuss bastard brag which is a relatively new game to me (thanks to a visit to a Redtooth Poker pub in Stoke on Trent) and has numerous potential opportunities for shed makeovers.

 

Crash is another imported game to the West End, which has had a little development and may be the subject of a future post.

 

"The game with no name" not sure how wide spread it is, but we will discuss for completeness and is probably underdeveloped. It is however a frightening game and is probably best kept for poker clubs Christmas party's. One might say it is the Jumanji of card games, that once started you have to finish to survive.

 

Hope I haven't bored you too much, don't really care if I have to be honest, as the blog is my own satirical diary. Tata (that's bye bye, not an invite to buy some steel or an Indian car).