Buy A Card

At the last home cash game I attended we played some dealer's choice games.  The game I found the most interesting was called "Buy a Card".

Each player is dealt 4 down cards.   Then the next 3 cards are placed one at a time on the board.  The first is the "cheapest" card - in this case 10¢.  The next card carried a 20¢ price tag.  The third card would run you 30¢.  The remaining stub was then placed next to the "flop" and if you wanted to buy the top card it was going to cost you 40¢.

The player to the dealer's left had the option of folding or buying a card from the board.  When a card is bought from the board the top stub card is then turned over to replace the purchased card unless a stub card was the chosen card.  This was done for 4 rounds leaving the player with 8 cards in his hand.  The players then show their best 5 card poker hand.

Now, the fact that I won at least 4 of these hands man have something to do with why I liked playing this game.  I hit 2 full houses and two flushes to win sizable pots.

I liked the fact that seeing what cards my opponents were picking was helpful in determining what kind of hand they might be pursuing while, at the same time, it was pretty easy to see what cards I needed were out.  It was also easy, provided you started with decent enough cards, to try to go for two hands at once.  I started out chasing a flush once but backed into a full house.

This game is easy enough to play: no wild cards to keep track of, no cards that kill the hand and force a redeal.  All in all, an easy game to play which is key to the success of dealer's choice type games.  There's a good chance I'll be calling this game in the future.