High card by suit

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High card by suit and low card by suit refer to assigning relative values to playing cards of equal rank based on their suit. When suit ranking is applied, the most common conventions from lowest to highest are:

Contents

English alphabetical order
clubs, followed by diamonds, hearts, and spades.
This ranking is used in the game of bridge.
Alternating colours
Diamonds, followed by clubs, hearts, and spades. Similar to alphabetical ranking in that the two highest rankings are occupied by the same two suits (hearts and spades) in the same relative position to one another, but differing in the two lowest rankings, which while occupied by the same two suits (clubs and diamonds) have their relative position to one another swapped.
This ranking is sometimes used in the Chinese card game Big Two.
High reds
Some Russian card games like Preference, 1000 etc. use the following order: spades, clubs, diamonds and hearts.
500 also uses this ordering.
Low reds
Some German card games like Skat use the following order: diamonds, hearts, spades and clubs.
Chinese-Japanese-Korean conventional order
clubs, followed by hearts, diamonds, and spades.
This ranking is commonly used in China, Japan, and South Korea, in their variants of Poker games.

Poker

Most poker games do not rank suits; the ace of clubs is just as good as the ace of spades. However, small issues (such as deciding who deals first) are sometimes resolved by dealing one card to each player. If two players draw cards of the same rank, one way to break the tie is to use an arbitrary hierarchy of suits. The order of suit rank differs by location; for example, the ranking most commonly used in the United States is not the one typically used in Italy.

Cards are always compared by rank first, and only then by suit. For example, using the "alphabetical order" of suits, the ace of clubs ranks higher than any king, but lower than the ace of diamonds. High card by suit is used to break ties between poker hands as a regional variance, [1] but more commonly is used in the following situations, as well as various others, based upon the circumstances of the particular game:

To randomly select a player to deal, to choose the game, to move to another table, or for other reasons, deal each player one card and the player with high card by suit is selected. Multiple players can be selected this way.
In games such as Seven-card stud, where the player with the lowest-ranking face-up card is required to open the first betting round for a minimal amount, ties can be broken by suit. In such low stud games as razz, the player with the highest-ranking upcard must post the fractional bet.
In High-low split games, or when two players' hands tie, the pot must be split evenly between them. When there is an odd amount of money in the pot that can't be split evenly, the odd low-denomination chip can be given to the player whose hand contains the high card by suit. (This solution is not necessary in games with blinds, in which case the odd chip between high and low is awarded to the high hand, and the odd chip between a split high or split low is awarded to the first player following the dealer button.)
During poker tournaments, a chip race is used to "colour up" large numbers of smaller-denomination chips, and a modified deal is used to assign leftover chips. Ties in the deal are broken by suit.

Contract bridge

In bridge, suit rank during the bidding phase of the game is by ascending alphabetical order.

During the play of the cards, the trump suit is superior to all other suits and the other suits are of equal rank to each other. If there is no trump suit, all suits are of equal rank.

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wild card (cards)</span> Card which may stand in for a card of another value

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Omaha hold 'em</span> Community card poker game

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Seven-card stud, also known as Seven-Toed Pete or Down-The-River, is a variant of stud poker. Before the 2000s surge of popularity of Texas hold 'em, seven-card stud was one of the most widely played poker variants in home games across the United States and in casinos in the eastern part of the country. Although seven-card stud is not as common in casinos today, it is still played online. The game is commonly played with two to eight players, however, eight may require special rules for the last cards dealt if no players fold. Playing with nine players is possible.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Black Lady</span> American card game of the hearts group for three to six players

Black lady is an American card game of the hearts group for three to six players and the most popular of the group. It emerged in the early 20th century as an elaboration of hearts and was initially also called discard hearts. It is named after its highest penalty card, the queen of spades or "black lady". It is a trick-avoidance game in which the aim is to avoid taking tricks containing hearts or the black lady. American author and leading bridge exponent, Ely Culbertson, describes it as "essentially hearts with the addition of the queen of spades as a minus card, counting thirteen" and goes on to say that "black lady and its elaborations have completely overshadowed the original hearts in popularity".

2/1 game forcing is a bidding system in modern contract bridge structured around the following responses to a one-level opening bid:

  1. a non-jump response in a new suit at the one-level is constructive and forcing for one round,
  2. a non-jump response in a new suit at the two-level is forcing to game, and
  3. a 1NT response to a major opening is forcing for one round and indicates insufficient values to immediately commit to game or bid a suit at the one-level.

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Polish Club is a bridge bidding system which was developed in Poland, where it is the most popular bidding system, and which is also used by players of other countries. It is a type of small club system.

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Desmoche is a popular rummy card game usually played for small stakes which closely resembles other games in the rummy family, like Conquian and gin rummy, more than poker. It was probably devised in Nicaragua in the first half of the 20th century.

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Pusoy dos, a variation of big two, is a popular type of "shedding" card game that originates on the islands of the Philippines in Calauag, Quezon Province. The object of the game is to be the first to discard one's hand by playing them to the table. If one cannot be first to play all cards, then the aim is to have as few cards as possible. Cards can be played separately or in certain combinations using poker hand rankings. Games of Pusoy Dos can be played by three or four people.

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Zar Points (ZP) is a statistically derived method for evaluating contract bridge hands developed by Zar Petkov. The statistical research Petkov conducted in the areas of hand evaluation and bidding is useful to bridge players, regardless of their bidding or hand evaluation system. The research showed that the Milton Work point count method, even when adjusted for distribution, is not sufficiently accurate in evaluating all hands. As a result, players often make incorrect or sub-optimal bids. Zar Points are designed to take many additional factors into consideration by assigning points to each factor based on statistical weight. While most of these factors are already implicitly taken into account by experienced players, Zar Points provides a quantitative method that allows them to be incorporated into bidding.

A reverse, in the card game contract bridge, is a bidding sequence designed to show additional strength without the need to make a jump bid; specifically two suits are bid in the reverse order to that expected by the basic bidding system. Precise methods and definitions vary with country, bidding system and partnership agreements.

The Useful Space Principle, or USP, in the game of contract bridge was first articulated in a series of six articles in The Bridge World, published from November 1980 through April 1981. The USP is expressed succinctly in The Bridge World glossary as "a partnership's assigning meanings to actions so that the remaining bidding space matches the needs of the auction."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Konter a Matt</span> Four-player card game of Luxembourg

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Draw poker is any poker variant in which each player is dealt a complete hand before the first betting round, and then develops the hand for later rounds by replacing, or "drawing", cards.

References

  1. "Rules of Card Games: Poker Hand Ranking". www.pagat.com. Archived from the original on 28 May 2010. Retrieved 24 April 2018.