PokerChess

Check it before you stack it

• Rules
• Origins

Pok­erChess is a new take on poker that involves no money bets. Wait, it gets bet­ter. The rea­son no money’s involved is because it’s the ideal game for the first play­ers to go down at a poker tour­na­ment to play. Two oppo­nents face off with 5 sets of card. They draw cards one at a time and place each card on one of their five stacks try­ing to ulti­mately achieve a poker hand that will beat their opponent’s.

Each set com­petes the one fac­ing it on the opponent’s side and vic­tory is deter­mined by the high­est 5 card com­bi­na­tion. In order to win you must beat your oppo­nent on at least 3 of the 5 sets. Win­ning 4 out of 5 is more rare, and 5 out of 5 is quite a feat.

A ses­sion is won by beat­ing the oppo­nent in at least 2 out of 3 games.

The lin­ear nature of the game makes com­plex hands such as flushes, straights, full houses and four of a kind much more likely than in a reg­u­lar Texas Hold’em setup. And if that isn’t fuck­ing excit­ing, we don’t know what is!

Acknowl­edge­ments Props to Austin Fowler for intro­duc­ing the game to Guil­laume Starek and I (Olivier Lacan) after a home game of Hold’em recently. Can’t stop play­ing that shit now, thanks a lot!