Tournament Strategies
After receiving pocket cards, you are immediately faced with a choice: play your cards and either raise or call the blinds, or fold.
Practice Matters
Fives and Tens
Fives and Tens This game, also called St. Louis Draw or Woolworth Draw, is played like standard Draw Poker except that all fives and tens are wild cards. But, to open the first round of betting, a player must hold at least one five and one ten in his hand as openers. (The game cannot be opened if a player holds all four five spots, but does not have a ten.) If no player has the minimum openers—a five and a ten—the deal passes, the players ante again, and new hands of five cards are dealt. This procedure is repeated until someone has the necessary openers. While the obtaining of a wild five and ten as openers may appear difficult to achieve, in reality there are slightly more passes in this game than in standard Draw Poker Jacks or Better. To be exact, the chances of being dealt a wild five and ten in the first five dealt cards are 1 in 8.28, or 7.28 to 1 against. Once the pot is opened, standard Draw rules are followed. Since there are possibly eight wild cards in the game, three of a kind, straights, flushes and full houses seldom win. Four of a kind is the average winning hand, but straight flushes and five of a kind occur frequently.
Low and High-Low
Low and High-Low Draw Poker Variants THE BIRTH OF LOW AND HIGH-LOW POKER GAMES The first time that I ever witnessed a Five Card Draw Low Poker game was in the cardroom of the Dempsey Vanderbilt Hotel in Miami Beach, Florida, during the month of August 1935. I was on vacation with my childhood buddy, James J. Braddock, then the World's Heavyweight Champion. We were on a month's holiday celebrating Jimmy's title win over Max Baer on June 13, 1935, at the Madison Square Garden Bowl on the flats of Astoria, New York.