Casino Pro Blog

A very simple form of poker game, draw poker has been played over the years in many variations such as the California lowball, Badugi, California high/low split, high/low with declare, double-draw and triple-draw and Q-ball. Along with Gardena jackpots, California lowball has been an immensely popular poker game during the 1930s – 1970s when Las Vegas and Atlantic City had not yet become home to the best gambling and poker scenes in United States. Nowadays, however, with stud and community poker games gaining much more favor among the players, the different draw poker games have lost their prominence as prime games in casinos and their play have become limited to home and other informal occasions.

Other serious draw poker games that are still played today, albeit as home fun poker games and for less risky stakes than among casino gamblers, include the shotgun and anaconda. The shotgun variation is played in high, low or high/low split and has a stud game like features. Here first each player gets five cards followed by the opening bet and a draw. The next round is the rollout phase where the players either arrange their cards or just put them face down. In subsequent rounds one by one the cards are revealed and betting continues till the showdown with the final card. The anaconda variation of home draw poker game starts with each player being initially dealt with seven cards. Then each player rejects three cards and passes it to his left-seated neighbor with the rule that before seeing which cards a neighbor has given, one has to discard three of his own cards. This is followed by the first betting round and another pass. This time two cards are passed to the right-seated neighbor. Subsequently there is another betting round, followed by a one-card pass to the left neighbor. After the fourth round pf betting, showdown happens and the player with the highest hand value of five cards among his seven wins the pot money.