Basic Poker Game Variations

To spice things up, many poker games allow for variations in their standard rules. Most often, these variations relate to:

Wild cards
Limits placed or removed on betting
Types of pots that can be won

Wild Cards

In some poker games, particular cards may be declared wild cards, which means that card can be assigned any value or suit. If 2s are wild and you have 2-6-8-9-T, you can use the 2 as a 7 and make a 6-7-8-9-T straight.

Common poker wild cards are jokers, twos (often termed deuces wild), the king of hearts (often called the suicide king), and the jack of spades and jack of hearts (often called the one-eyed jacks, since only one eye on each card is visible).

Jokers are also sometimes declared to be bug wild, which means that the joker can represent any card if it’s used to complete a flush or straight, but otherwise can represent only an ace.

Limit, Pot-Limit, and No-Limit Poker

In poker, a limit is a restriction on the size of a bet that can be placed during the game. The guidelines below outline typical limit rules. If you’re playing a limit game, verify the rules with the host or dealer before beginning.

Limit poker: Limit poker may involve a single betting limit, such as a $5 limit on each bet. It may also involve two limits, expressed as $5–$10, for example. In such a game, you could bet a maximum of $5 in the first one or two rounds of betting, then a maximum of $10 in each subsequent round of betting.
Pot-limit poker: In pot-limit poker, you can bet only as much as the size of the pot. If five people ante $1 each, and the first player bets $5, you can raise another $10 because there’s $10 in the pot. The player after you can then re-raise another $20 because, after your raise, the pot contains $20.
No-limit poker: In no-limit poker, any player can bet all of her chips at any time—called going all in. Going all in is risky and can cost you all your chips if someone calls with a better hand. But it can be a good strategy if you’re confident you have the best hand (the nuts), if you want to drive other players out of a hand early on, if you have a huge chip advantage, or if you don’t have many chips left and have relatively little to lose.

Low Games and High/Low Games

Usually, the person with the best cards wins the pot. But low games and high/low games allow the player with the worst hand to win. These games vary widely, so ask the dealer for the exact rules of the game you’re playing.

Low games: The person with the lowest hand wins.
High/low games: The pot is split between the person with the highest hand and the person with the lowest.
- In some high/low games, a low hand must meet certain criteria. In Omaha 8 High/Low, a winning low hand can contain only cards of 8 or below and cards that don’t form any hands in the hand rankings. In these games, there won’t always be a low winner, but there will always be a high winner.
- In some games, low hands that also form straights, flushes, full houses, and so on are allowed to be low, such as an A-2-3-4-5 straight. In such cases, a player can have the best high hand and low hand and therefore win the entire pot.