While it’s best to memorize this chart, until you do just print it out and have it near you when you’re playing. You can see that as the higher card goes down in rank, the spread between it and the lower card gets tighter. That’s mainly because the only hope you have with a starting hand like 7-6o is to make a Straight and more Straights can be made when there are fewer “gaps” to deal with. For those of you who are Video Poker players, you know exactly what I mean; in fact, I found my experience at playing VP very helpful in recognizing playable situations.
Now look at the minimum hands for the mighty Ace. If the lower card is of any rank and is suited, the hand is playable, but if it’s unsuited, it should be no lower than a 10. As you’ll find out, most players will cling to A-xo until the bitter end. And you’ll most certainly lose some nice hands to something like A-6o, but in the long run, it shouldn’t be played. To draw an analogy to Blackjack one more time, folding A-6o is like hitting A-7 versus a dealer’s 9; not everyone does it, even though it’s the proper play. It may not “feel” right, but you’ll make more $$$ in the long run if you’ll do it. Math does not have room for “feelings”. Cold, perhaps but that’s how it is.
Pairs: No pairs are listed on here because all of them are playable at one time or another. Just remember that this list (and the pairs) is not a license to play these hands at any time, under any set of circumstances. For example, you’d be crazy to play 10-7s in an early position after 3 players have raised behind you. As I said earlier, this list is as much about what not to play as it is about what’s playable. So stop calling with those Q-3s hands and be patient until I show you the entire matrix. That will incorporate this list and the pairs into a complete strategy that takes into consideration your position, how many bets you have to call and so on. In the meantime, I have some homework for you and that’ll wrap it up.
Strip poker is a variant of the card game of poker, in which the rules require players to remove articles of clothing in response to various events.
Rules
The game can be played based on any variety of poker, with the same number of players, dealing and betting rules, etc. There are a number of ways in which the rules can then be developed into strip poker. For example, at the end of each hand:
The player with the worst hand must remove a piece of their clothing; or
The player who loses the most money in that round must remove one; or
The player with the best hand may remove it from them; or
The player with the best hand may choose which player must lose an article; or
All players except the winner of the hand lose an article. Note that this makes for an extremely brief game, unless fully-nude players are required to perform some action when they lose a hand, in which case it may even continue after all players are nude.
Alternatively, whenever a player runs out of chips, they must trade a piece of clothing for a new (usually fixed) number of chips.
If players are then allowed to “buy back” clothing when they have won more chips, this can result in a zero-sum game, where there is no long-term net loss of clothing. (With two people, this will have the consequence that only one of them is missing clothing.) (Note that “buying back” may be disallowed, so that the aggregate nudity is always increasing.)
As a further variant, players who have lost all of their clothing, achieving nudity, must perform sex acts.
Popularity
There are no known professional associations. The U.S. TV show Strip Poker is in fact a general knowledge quiz, albeit one where contestants take (some of) their clothes off; though it involves cards in poker hands, the resemblance to the actual game is distant.
The prefix “strip” can be added on to a game title with a subsequent nudity-inducing adaptation of the rules (examples: strip Candyland, strip chess, strip solitaire).
While a popular subject for pornographic fantasy and video games, genuine research into strip poker as a form of sexuality is lacking. The element of risk and of (mock) coercion fits in with a general sexual approach of domination and submission and/or humiliation.
Strip poker and other sexual games can occur:
as part of a mature sexual relationship, where the objective is to provide variety alongside intercourse (possibly introducing more adventurous/deviant forms of intercourse)
as a ritual of courtship (in some circumstances it may be more acceptable for partners to enter intimate situations as part of a game)
as recreation amongst adults with no intention to move towards sexual intercourse
as part of a pornographic display (whether as part of prostitution or not) which combines sexual titillation with the normal interest of seeing a game played
as a party game for youth
as the basis of television game shows such as Räsypokka (Finland - 2002) and Strip! (Germany – 1999)
