Poker dice

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A set of poker dice owned by a member of the Royal Indian Army Service Corps during the Second World War Dice, game (AM 2015.20.16-2) (cropped).jpg
A set of poker dice owned by a member of the Royal Indian Army Service Corps during the Second World War
A set of poker dice and a dice cup Pokerwurfel.jpg
A set of poker dice and a dice cup

Poker dice are dice which, instead of having number pips, have representations of playing cards upon them. Poker dice have six sides, one each of an Ace, King, Queen, Jack, 10, and 9, and are used to form a poker hand.

Contents

Each variety of poker dice varies slightly in regard to suits, though the ace of spades is almost universally represented. 9♣ and 10♦ are frequently found, while face cards are traditionally represented not by suit, but instead by color: red for kings, green for queens and blue for jacks. Manufacturers have not standardized the colors of the face sides. The game can also be played with ordinary dice.

As a game

Three sets of poker dice Poker Dice d6.JPG
Three sets of poker dice

The classic poker dice game is played with 5 dice and two or more players. Each player has a total of 3 rolls and the ability to hold dice in between rolls. After the three rolls, the best hand wins.

In most variations, a straight only counts as a Bust (high-card). A Straight is less probable than a Full House, so, if counted, it should rank above a Full House, though tradition usually ranks it below Full House, as in card poker. Neither a "flush" nor a "straight flush" is a possible hand, due to the lack of suits on the dice. [1] [2]

In some rules, only a straight to a King is called a Straight, while a straight to an Ace is called (somewhat incorrectly) a Flush. Each one has an exact probability of 120 / 7776. Under these rules, a Straight beats a Full House (unlike in card poker, but correctly reflecting its probability) but does not beat a Four of a Kind (incorrectly reflecting its lower probability). A Flush beats a Four of a Kind (unlike in card poker, but correctly reflecting its lower probability).

Probabilities

The poker dice hand rankings and the corresponding probabilities of rolling that hand are as follows [3] [4] [5] [6] (not sorted by probability but from highest to lowest ranking):

HandExact probabilityPercentage1 in ...Example
Five of a kind
6 / 77760.081296
J J J J J
Four of a kind
150 / 77761.9351.8
10 10 10 10 A
Full house
300 / 77763.8625.9
K K K 9 9
Straight
240 / 77763.0932.4
A K Q J 10
Three of a kind
1200 / 777615.436.5
9 9 9 K J
Two pair
1800 / 777623.154.3
Q Q 9 9 A
One pair
3600 / 777646.302.2
10 10 K Q 9
Bust (high card; no pair, no straight)
480 / 7776 [lower-alpha 1] 6.1716.2
A K Q J 9
  1. Busts have much lower probability than in card poker, because there are only 6 values instead of 13, making pairs and straights much more likely than with cards. In poker dice there are in fact only four possible bust hands: [A K Q J 9], [A K Q 10 9], [A K J 10 9], and [A Q J 10 9]; both other no-pair hands (i.e., in which either the A or the 9 are missing) are straights. Consequently, in some variants of the rules, straights are counted as busts. [7]

Variants

Marlboro once marketed a set of octahedral poker dice that included suits; each die had slightly different numberings, ranging from 7 up to ace. A similar set is currently manufactured by Koplow Games. [8] [9]

In 1974, Aurora produced a set of 12-sided poker dice called "Jimmy the Greek Odds Maker Poker Dice" [10] and in 2000, Aurora/Rex Games produced a similar set under the name "Royal Poker Dice". [11] The sets featured five 12-sided dice allowing for all 52 playing cards to be represented. The remaining 8 faces featured stars and acted as wild cards allowing for every possible poker hand to be rolled.

A variant of Liar's dice is commonly used with Poker dice. A two player game, players roll their own set of Poker dice behind a screen, and bid and call based on Poker dice hands.

See also

Related Research Articles

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

A wild card in card games is one that may be used to represent any other playing card, sometimes with certain restrictions. Jokers are often used as wild cards, but other cards may be designated as wild by the rules or by agreement. In addition to their use in card games played with a standard pack, wild cards may also exist in dedicated deck card games, such as the 'Master' card in Lexicon.

A poker player is drawing if they have a hand that is incomplete and needs further cards to become valuable. The hand itself is called a draw or drawing hand. For example, in seven-card stud, if four of a player's first five cards are all spades, but the hand is otherwise weak, they are drawing to a flush. In contrast, a made hand already has value and does not necessarily need to draw to win. A made starting hand with no help can lose to an inferior starting hand with a favorable draw. If an opponent has a made hand that will beat the player's draw, then the player is drawing dead; even if they make their desired hand, they will lose. Not only draws benefit from additional cards; many made hands can be improved by catching an out – and may have to in order to win.

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

Omaha hold 'em is a community card poker game similar to Texas hold 'em, where each player is dealt four cards and must make their best hand using exactly two of them, plus exactly three of the five community cards. The exact origin of the game is unknown, but casino executive Robert Turner first brought Omaha into a casino setting when he introduced the game to Bill Boyd, who offered it as a game at the Las Vegas Golden Nugget Casino. Omaha uses a 52-card French deck. Omaha hold 'em 8-or-better is the "O" game featured in H.O.R.S.E.

Pai gow poker is a version of pai gow that is played with playing cards, instead of traditional pai gow's Chinese dominoes. The game of pai gow poker was created in 1985 in the United States by Sam Torosian, owner of the Bell Card Club.

Five-card stud is the earliest form of the card game stud poker, originating during the American Civil War, but is less commonly played today than many other more popular poker games. It is still a popular game in parts of the world, especially in Finland where a specific variant of five-card stud called Sökö is played. The word sökö is also used for checking in Finland.

In poker, the probability of each type of 5-card hand can be computed by calculating the proportion of hands of that type among all possible hands.

Lowball or low poker is a variant of poker in which the normal ranking of hands is inverted. Several variations of lowball poker exist, differing in whether aces are treated as high cards or low cards, and whether straights and flushes are used.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Video poker</span> Casino video game

Video poker is a casino game based on five-card draw poker. It is played on a computerized console similar in size to a slot machine.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Yahtzee</span> Dice game by Milton Bradley

Yahtzee is a dice game made by Milton Bradley. It was first marketed under the name of Yahtzee by game entrepreneur Edwin S. Lowe in 1956. The game is a development of earlier dice games such as Poker Dice, Yacht and Generala. It is also similar to Yatzy, which is popular in Scandinavia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Brag (card game)</span> British card game

Brag is an 18th century British card game, and the British national representative of the vying or "bluffing" family of gambling games. It is a descendant of the Elizabethan game of Primero and one of the several ancestors to poker, the modern version just varying in betting style and hand rankings. It has been described as the "longest-standing British representative of the Poker family."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Big two</span> Chinese card game

Big two is a card game of Cantonese origin. It is similar to the games of Zheng Shangyou, daifugō, president, crazy eights, cheat, and other shedding games. The game is very popular in East Asia and in Southeast Asia, especially throughout mainland China, Hong Kong, Vietnam, Macau, Taiwan, Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore. It is played both casually and as a gambling game. It is usually played with two to four players, the entire deck being dealt out in either case. The objective of the game is to be the first to play off all of one's cards.

Non-standard poker hands are hands which are not recognized by official poker rules but are made by house rules. Non-standard hands usually appear in games using wild cards or bugs. Other terms for nonstandard hands are special hands or freak hands. Because the hands are defined by house rules, the composition and ranking of these hands is subject to variation. Any player participating in a game with non-standard hands should be sure to determine the exact rules of the game before play begins.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sequence (game)</span> Abstract strategy board and card game

Sequence is an abstract strategy tabletop party game. Sequence was invented by Douglas Reuter and Hamish. They originally called the game Sequence Five. He spent years developing the concept, and, in June 1981, granted Jax Ltd. an exclusive license to manufacture, distribute and sell the board game Sequence and its subsequent variations. The game was first sold in a retail store in 1982. In 2017, Goliath Game Company bought Jax, and in early 2018 also bought all licensor rights and now owns 100% of the game Sequence. Doug Reuter is acknowledged as the inventor of Sequence on all newly produced copies of the game - both on the box and in the printed rules.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Teen patti</span> South Asian gambling card game

Teen patti is a gambling card game. Teen Patti originated in India and is popular throughout South Asia. It originated in the English game of three-card brag, with influences from poker. It is also called flush or flash in some areas.

A number of related games under the Yahtzee brand have been produced. They all commonly use dice as the primary tool for game play, but all differ generally. As Yahtzee itself has been sold since 1954, the variants released over the years are more recent in comparison, with the oldest one, Triple Yahtzee, developed in 1972, eighteen years after the introduction of the parent game.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Power Yahtzee</span> Dice game

Power Yahtzee is a variation on the classic dice game Yahtzee first published by Winning Moves Games USA in 2007. It includes a sixth multiplier die called a "Power die" and an expanded scoresheet. This game is no longer in production.

The following is a glossary of poker terms used in the card game of poker. It supplements the glossary of card game terms. Besides the terms listed here, there are thousands of common and uncommon poker slang terms. This is not intended to be a formal dictionary; precise usage details and multiple closely related senses are omitted here in favor of concise treatment of the basics.

Stud poker is any of a number of poker variants in which each player receives a mix of face-down and face-up cards dealt in multiple betting rounds. Stud games are also typically non-positional games, meaning that the player who bets first on each round may change from round to round. The cards dealt face down to each individual player are called hole cards, which gave rise to the common English expression ace in the hole for any hidden advantage.

The fictional universe of the Discworld novels by Terry Pratchett features a number of invented games, some of which have gone on to spawn real-world variants.

References

  1. Berger, A. J.; Bruning, Nancy (1979). Lady Luck's Companion: How to Play ... how to Enjoy ... how to Bet ... how to Win (illustrated ed.). Harper & Row. p. 57. ISBN   978-0-06-014696-2.
  2. Bewersdorff, Jörg (2004). Luck, Logic, and White Lies: The Mathematics of Games. CRC Press. p. 22. ISBN   978-1-000-06531-2. Extract of page 22
  3. Deep, Ronald (2006), Probability and statistics with integrated software routines, Elsevier Inc., ISBN   0-12-369463-9 Chapter 1 p 42
  4. Fred Schuh (2015). The Master Book of Mathematical Recreations (reprinted ed.). Courier Dover Publications. p. 188. ISBN   978-0-486-80895-6. Extract of page 188
  5. David Stirzaker (1999). Probability and Random Variables: A Beginner's Guide (illustrated, reprinted ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 109. ISBN   978-0-521-64445-7. Extract of page 109
  6. Bărboianu, Cătălin (2006), Probability Guide to Gambling: The Mathematics of Dice, Slots, oulette, Baccarat, Blackjack, Poker, Lottery and Sport Bets, INFAROM Publishing, p. 224, ISBN   973-87520-3-5 Extract of page 224
  7. Arneson, Erik (2012). "The Complete Rules for the Dice Game Poker Dice". About.com. New York Times Company. "Board / Card Games" subsite. Archived from the original on 2014-04-12.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)
  8. "Koplow Games". Archived from the original on 2014-04-19. Retrieved 2014-04-18.
  9. 8-sided poker dice on BoardGameGeek.com
  10. Jimmy the Greek Odds Maker Poker Dice on BoardGameGeek.com
  11. Royal Poker Dice on BoardGameGeek.com