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)

Kuhn poker is a simplified form of poker developed by Dr. Harold W. Kuhn, it is a zero sum two player game. The deck includes only three playing cards, for example a King, Queen, and Jack. One card is dealt to each player, then the first player must bet or pass then the second player may bet or pass. If any player chooses to bet the opposing player must bet as well (“call”) in order to stay in the round. After both players pass or bet the player with the highest card wins the pot. Kuhn demonstrated that there are many game theoretic optimal strategies for this game.

References

• H. W. Kuhn, Simplified Two-Person Poker; in H. W. Kuhn and A. W. Tucker (editors), Contributions to the Theory of Games, volume 1, pages 97-103, Princeton University Press, 1950.

The poker game called Chicago is one of the most popular card games in Sweden today. Relying on the keeping of score instead of the placing of bets, it is suitable even for environments such as schools, where gambling is often prohibited. The game exists in countless versions, so here a (somewhat arbitrarily chosen) basic game will be followed by a number of possible variations.

Hand scores

The backbone of the game is that each poker hand has its own point value, as given in this table:

One pair – 1 point.
Two pair – 2 points.
Three of a kind – 3 points.
Straight – 4 points.
Flush – 5 points.
Full House – 6 points.
Four of a kind – 7 points (but see Variations below).
Straight flush – 8 points (but see Variations below).

Basic rules

Chicago is played with a standard 52-card deck. Each player is dealt five cards. The objective is to reach 52 points.

Exchanges and hand scoring

The players are allowed to exchange any number of their cards. If a player chooses to exchange one card only, he may choose “one up”, meaning that he is dealt one card faced up, which he can either accept, or instead take the next card unseen. After the exchanges, the player with the best hand (and only one player) gets points for his hand. Then follows another round of exchanges, but no hand scoring.

The game

Now, the first player begins by playing one card. Ordinary whist rules apply, but the players keep their cards collected by themselves. The player who wins the last trick gets 5 points. Also, the player with the best hand (whether it is the same player or not) gets points for his hand.

Chicago

After the second exchange, any player can choose to play Chicago. In this case, he pledges himself to win all the tricks of the game. If he does, he is awarded 15 points, but if he fails, the penalty is just as harsh: -15 points.

Variations

• Sometimes, a player given five cards below ten (either inclusive or exclusive) is allowed to replace them before the exchanges begin.
• Some play with 3 exchanges instead of 2. Then of course, scoring for hands will be made after both the first and the second exchange.
• Some do not use the “one up” rule.
• Often, one wants to give higher rewards than 7 or 8 points for Four of a kind and Straight flush respectively. There are several ways to achieve this, most notably by elevating the player immediately to 52 points, or lowering either all players or one player of the holder’s choice to 0 points, or a combination of these. Holding a Royal flush usually means immediate victory.
• The confusion is great as to what scores are appointed in the case of Chicago. Some will argue that no player will get any points at all besides the +15 or -15, whilst others will allow almost any points. The +5 for the game, however, can never be stacked with the +15 for Chicago.
• Some prescribe that any player with 45 points or more is not allowed to replace any cards.
• Some require that after (and not in the same hand as) a player reaches 52 points, he must win the game once more before he actually wins. This handles the possibility that more than one player reach 52 points in the same hand.

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Blind man’s bluff is a version of poker which is unconventional in that each person sees the cards of all players except his own.

The standard version (also called Indian poker) is simply high card. Each player is dealt one card which he places on his forehead facing outwards, and a round of betting occurs, as players attempt to guess if they have the highest card based on what they see around them.

Other versions (forehead stud) are variations on stud poker, in which one or more of the hole cards is hidden from its owner, but shown to all other players, as above.

During its coverage of the 2004 World Series of Poker, ESPN showed a Blind Man’s Bluff version of Texas hold’em.

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Guts is quite different from most other poker games (in fact classifying it as a poker game at all is somewhat questionable). Rather than the customary rounds of betting followed by a single showdown, guts features multiple rounds, each of which consist of the decision to be “in” or “out”, and each of which contains a showdown. Only the players who stay “in” participate in the showdown. In the most common version, the player who stays in with the best hand receives the current pot, while all other players who stayed in must match the pot. (For example, if the pot is $5 and three people stay in, then one player will receive the $5 pot and two players will be forced to add $5 each to the pot, thus doubling it.) Then the hand is re-dealt, and all players (even those who were “out” in the last round) can participate again. The game ends when only a single player has the guts to stay “in”, and thus the pot is taken without replenishment.

Each player’s hand usually consists of a reduced poker hand of either 2 or 3 cards. The cards are ranked as in regular 5-card poker, but in some variations straights and flushes count and in some they do not.

Another variation is for three-card guts. The hands are ranked as follows: Three of a kind, straight flush, straight, flush, pair. Each player receives two cards face down. In turn, each player declares whether they’re in or out. If they’re in, they receive their third card face up. The dealer declares last; if no other player has stayed in, then the dealer must have a pair or better to win the pot. Another variation is for the other players to have another chance to declare and challenge the dealer. With this variation, there is no requirement for the dealer’s hand; if no one challenges him, the dealer wins.

Declaring “in” or “out” is similar to declaring high or low in high-low games. Each player takes a chip, places their hands under the table, and either places the chip in one fist or not. Each player then holds their closed fist above the table, and the players simultaneously open their hands to reveal their decision (a chip represents “in”, an empty hand represents “out”).

Because the pot can double (or more) each round, the stakes can grow exponentially, and pots of 50 or 100 times the original ante are not unheard of.

There are many variations. Sometimes only the single player with the worst hand (who stayed in) must add to the pot, but they must double the pot rather than match it. In an especially vicious variation, nobody wins the pot unless nobody else stays in. This can degenerate quickly, when one player must add a large amount to the pot, and decides to stay in until he wins it back. Thus the game continues indefinitely, with one player continually adding larger and larger amounts to the pot. The pot may grow so big that no player has enough cash to match it, leading to arguments about how to end the game. (This variation is not recommended when playing among friends. Often this variation is abandoned after the first really big pot leads to conflict.)

One solution to the exponentially growing pots is to cap them at 50x or 100x the ante. That is, if there are 5 players with an ante of $1, the pot started at $5. If there were 3 doublings, the pot is now at $40. Suppose the “cap the pot at $50″ rule were in force. Then, if another doubling occurred, each loser would pay $40, but the pot would now be at $50 and the extra $30 would be set aside as the ante once there’s a hand with a winner and no loser.

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Just as Oxford stud is a mixed stud/community card version of Texas hold ‘em, Billabong is a mixed version of Manila. Each player is dealt two downcards and one upcard. Low upcard starts the betting with a Bring-in if you are playing with one, otherwise high card starts the betting. Next, two community cards are dealt, followed by a second betting round, beginning with the player with the best exposed partial poker hand (counting the community cards, as in Oxford stud). Then a third community card is dealt, followed by a third betting round. Finally a fourth community card and fourth betting round and showdown. Each player plays the best five-card hand he can make from the three in his hand plus the four on the board in any combination.

Shanghai is the same game with an extra hole card, but no more than two hole cards play. That is, the game begins with each player being dealt three downcards and one upcard; each player must discard one of his hole cards at some point during the game as determined ahead of time. The most common variation is to discard immediately as in Pineapple; the second most common is to discard just before showdown as in Tahoe.

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Though called “stud”, this is a combination stud/community card game that was popular at MIT in the 1960s, in which players receive individual downcards, individual upcards, and community cards. Many variations on this are possible by changing what kinds of cards and how many are dealt in various rounds.

One difficulty with such a combination is deciding the betting order: in stud games, the player with the best upcards showing bets first in each round (except sometimes the first, where the worst upcard is forced to begin the betting with a Bring-in). In community card games, each betting begins with the same player (because there generally are no upcards), making it more positional. Oxford stud chooses to use the players’ individual upcards for determining order, which makes it play more like stud.

First, each player is dealt two downcards and one upcard as in seven-card stud, followed by a first betting round. Like stud, the game is usually played with a Bring-in, the lowest upcard being forced to pay it, and betting follows after that. After the first round is complete, two community cards are dealt to the table, followed by a second betting round, beginning with the player with the highest-ranking incomplete poker hand (as in stud) made from his upcard plus the two community cards. For example, if one player has a K upcard, and a second player has a 7 upcard, and the community cards are T-7 (T = 10), the second player bets first (since he has a pair of 7s, and the other player only has K-high). Then a second upcard is dealt to each player, followed by a third betting round, again beginning with the player who can make the best partial hand with his two upcards and the board. Finally, a third community card is dealt to table, followed by a fourth betting round and showdown. Note that as with Mississippi stud, each player has five cards of his hand exposed at this point (two of his own plus three on the board), so it is possible for a flush or straight to be the high hand for the purpose of first bet. At showdown each player makes the best five-card hand he can from the four cards he is dealt plus the three community cards, in any combination. This game is usually played High-low split.

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Some poker games just don’t fit neatly into the categories of draw poker, stud poker, or community card poker, and some have features of more than one of these categories.

Stud Horse poker

Stud Horse poker is mentioned in the California law books as one of the gambling games prohibited in California’s card rooms. There is no definition for it under the law, however. It appears not to be Stud poker, which is not prohibited and is offered in several variations in California card rooms.

Blind Man’s Bluff

Blind Man’s Bluff is a version of poker in which a player sees the cards that would generally be visible to the other players, but does not see his own. It can be played with just one card (“Indian Poker”), as a community card poker game, or as five-card stud.

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