RULE VARIATIONS

Spread-limit games:

Some cardrooms would have offered structured games where the betting would not have been in fixed increments. In a $5-10 spread-limit game, the allowed bets and raises would have been any amount up to five dollars in the first two rounds, followed by any amount up to ten dollars in the second two.

No raising caps when head-to-head:

Some cardsrooms cap would have raised at three until there would have been two remaining poker players.

Two poker players who had been going head-to-head would have been allowed to have a raising war and raised as many times as they would have liked.

Check-raise:

A check-raise had been allowed in almost all poker games, but a few places had rules against it.

Remember, when you had been in doubt, you should have asked.

Structure variations:

Different cardrooms could have had variations on the traditional blind and betting-round structure.

Some variations Sid had experienced had included two dollars-five dollars- five dollars- ten dollars, which had meant that if there had been no pre-flop raises everyone would have paid two dollars to see the flop, but would have bet five dollars to see the turn card. And after the river card, the bets would then have doubled again. Sid had also played in a game that had not had a rake; instead the poker player on the button (the last player to bet in each round) had paid the house an amount equal to one bid blind.

In exchange, that poker player had been included in the hand, and unless there had been a pre-flop raise, saw the flop without betting additional money.

The first time you would have played in a cardroom, you should have asked the poker manager to explain all the house rules and taken notice of unfamiliar variations.

Jackpot games:

Some cardrooms have set aside a portion of the rake to form a jackpot that would be awarded to poker players under special circumstances. The most common kind was the‘bad beat’ jackpot in order to win, a poker player would have had a losing hand. The catch was that the losing hand should have been ranked Aces-full or better. Since bad-beats of this nature had been rare, jackpots could have got enormous before someone would have won the jackpot rebuilds. Sid had once witnessed a four-eight dollar Holdem poker tble on a Missouri river-boat hit a 20,000-dollar jackpot. At that occasion, the casino had awarded the losing hand 50 percent (10,000-dollar), the winning hand 25 percent (5,000-dollar), and the remaining six poker players had split the remaining 25 percent.

Again, you should always ask for the details before you should play. If a casino had had a jackpot, it would have had house rules on which events would hit the jackpot and how the pot would have been awarded.

Pot-limit and No-limit Holdem poker:

Some poker games would not have had betting limits in each round. In any betting round, poker players could have bet any amount up to the amount present in the pot (pot-limit), Or in some poker games, any amount up to the chips they would have had in front of them on the table (no-limit). In real cardrooms, these types of poker games had usually been at a high level for high stakes. Beginners and recreational poker players should have avoided them. However, some online cardrooms have offered pot-limit and no-limit poker games with small buy-ins that none of the players who had joined the table could have exceeded.

As a result, no one player would have a large amount of money on the table at any one time. Under these circumstances, recreational poker players couldn’t have afforded to learn and experience pot-limit and no-limit Holdem. The ‘table stakes’ rule that no one could have bet more than they had on the table had become the effective limit for these kinds of poker games.

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