Playing for Fun: Wild Cards 1 - fixed wilds

If you’ve played poker for fun more than money, with beer, friends and chat instead of casino regulars, rake and high stakes, then probably the odd wild card game has entered into your dealer’s choice lexicon. While I would never recommend playing these games for big money (for lots of reasons), it’s interesting to learn how to play them for a bit of a laugh, kind of like sliding down the ski slope on a bit of old lino as a change from skiing in competitions. But if you’re going to play wild card poker, you might as well know what’s going on…

Fixed Wilds – wherein a certain card or cards is designated ‘wild’ and fits in to your hand, if your lucky enough to receive one, as any card you wish.

The most well-known card of choice is the humble 2 – ‘Deuces Wild’ wherein a 2, usually the lowest card in the deck, becomes wild, i.e. can stand in for any card, any rank, any suit. Therefore holding 4s 5s 6d 8c 2d, your hand becomes an 8-high straight, or holding four of a suit and a 2 you hold a flush.

Obviously, there are only four wild cards in the deck, and holding one greatly increases the strength of your hand. So powerful are the fixed wild cards that they make great targets for the unscrupulous card-marker or cheat, and it is very difficult to make informed decisions on your own or opponents’ hand strength. In draw poker, for example, holding 2 2 x x x is vastly superior to holding A A x x x, and improvement is hard to gauge. It is possible in fixed wild card games to be dealt the unbeatable nuts (or a hand destined to improve to such) simply by virtue of getting the lion’s share of wilds right off the bat, and this is great when it happens to you, and irritatingly costly when it happens to someone else.

Fixed wild card games can translate into any form of poker: draw, 7-stud, even flop games. Obviously the wild on the flop is communal, and if in Omaha you held one or even two of the others available, you would have, in the latter case, the best hand no matter what happened. There are extra rules which can act as tie-breakers (see Wild Cards 3 – the Purity Rule) but especially if you’re playing hi-lo the Ace-wild-card combination in your hand is a huge advantage.

Problems aside, there are some genuinely fun wild card games out there. Personally I think those with moveable, or unpredictable wilds are more entertaining. To end this introduction, here are the rules to a kind of halfway house game, with some fixed and some moveable wilds: follow the Jacks.

How to play Follow the Jacks:

This is a Seven-card Stud game, played fixed limit, usually around the kitchen table. The betting occurs as in regular Stud (See How to Play Seven-Card Stud) (three initial cards are dealt to each player, two down and one face-up, betting round 1, another up, betting round 2, a third up, betting round 3, a fourth up, betting round 4, a fifth and final down card, betting round 5).

All Jacks in the deck are wild cards, and when it comes to the open (face up) cards, the card dealt face-up following a Jack becomes wild, until another face-up Jack is dealt.

In other words, if five people are playing, and the person in seat one is dealt a Jack, and the person in seat two is dealt an 8, then all Jacks and all 8s are wild. If, in the same round, a Jack is dealt to seat three, and a 4 to seat four, then 8s stop being wild and 4s become so instead. If, in any but the final round, a Jack is dealt to the last player, then the first card which is dealt face-up on the next round becomes the new wild card. A Jack dealt to the last player on the final face-up round (sixth street) does not affect the wilds (they remain as previously determined).

Any hole card Jacks are permanent wild cards, and any down cards which match the moveable wild are wild as well (so if a Jack and then 4 are dealt face up, any fours in your hole cards become (temporarily) wild). Once sixth street in its entirety has been dealt, the wilds remain fixed as their last incarnation. If a Jack is dealt as the final face-up card, then the previous wild remains so. If two Jacks are dealt face up in a row, the next face-up card dealt is wild, and in the unlikely event of two Jacks being the final face-up cards to be dealt, Jacks only remain wild for the final rounds of betting.

That’s about it. It sounds complicated, but isn’t really. You can play it high low for a bit of variety, too. The amusement of this game comes from the possibility of your hand suddenly being devalued or becoming much stronger as the wild cards change. Obviously, betting out players decreases the number of face-up cards coming out, and therefore the likelihood of multiple changes in wild card.

Final thoughts on wild card games:

Something to keep in mind for all games involving wild cards is that the strength of your hand (and other players’) will be much greater than in a pure game. Your two pair probably won’t be winning at the river. Wild cards also create the (fairly unlikely) possibility of ending up with 5 of a kind as a real hand, which tends to be held to outrank all others, including the Royal Flush. As with all of these types of games, it’s good to bear in mind that it isn’t really poker in the purist’s sense of the word, but it does generate fun amongst friends and nachos.