Poker

A classic gambling game for any number of players.

Synopsis

I'm sure you don't need me to explain poker to you. For the basics of playing poker may I suggest you try the internet.

However poker with the Journey Deck has some curious differences, caused by the different sizes and numbers of suits and the double suited court cards.

Components

• The Journey Deck - Only The Suit and Court Cards. Remove the Arcana Cards from the deck to play.
• A Dealer Token - To mark small/big blind. (An arcana card is normally used for this).
• Coin - This is an excellent gambling game.

The Use of the Arcana

The Major Arcana (trump cards 1-22) are removed from the deck when playing Poker, with an arcana card of the group's preference usually being used to denote the dealer each round.

There are some obscure poker variants that incorporate the Arcana either in complicated ranking structures or as 'chaff' of no value. These variants are not detailed here.

The Crooked Court Debate

There is a highly opinionated split disagreement on one particular rule for poker using the journey deck: whether to permit the use of the inverted ('crooked') suit on the Court Cards (sages and rooks)

Crooked Court Allows the inverted suit on Rooks and Sages to count towards flushes. This makes flushes more likely than four-of-a-kind

Common Court Disallows the inverted suit. Only the top right suit may be used towards flushes. This makes four-of-a-kind more likely than flushes!

Whichever style you prefer, it can be (literally) vitally important to confirm whether you are playing with a crooked court

Poker Rankings

Below are hand rankings in order of probability

Where two hands have the same rank, high card wins

Where high card is the same, highest crown wins