Player's Stories

Add a Little Variety To Your Home Game
By Steve Ruddock

Tired of playing the same poker games every time you and your friends gather for a home game? 7 Card Stud, 5 Card Draw, Texas Hold Em..., this is the first in a series of columns to introduce you to some little known and seldom played poker games.

Padooki

Padooki is a 4 card, triple draw, lowball game, which traces its origins back to England. What separates Padooki from the traditional lowball games is, in Padooki the best hand is A234 of different suits. Another additional element in Padooki is; any 4 non-suited cards will beat any hand that has 2 or more cards of the same suit, regardless of the rank. For instance an A 2 7 J will beat an A 2 3 4 because the second hand has 2 clubs. Holding a hand of 4 different suits is known as a Padooki.

Padooki Hand Rankings

1) A234 of different suits
2) The 4 lowest non-paired cards of different suits, ranking starts with the highest card in a players hand, for example 3458 beats A239
3) The 4 lowest non-paired cards of any suit

Now lets take a look at the basic play of the game. Each player is dealt 4 cards face down, followed by a round of betting beginning with the player to the left of the dealer. Following the initial betting round each player will then declare how many cards he will draw, up to 3, this follows the same order of the betting. This process is repeated 2 more times until a total of 3 draws have been made, each with its own round of betting. If at any time there are not enough cards remaining in the deck for a player to draw all of the discards and folded hands up to this point should be reshuffled and now become the deck.

The obvious key to winning in this game is to hold a Padooki. In any lowball game it is crucial to start with a strong hand, Padooki is no different in this respect despite the 3 draws. Drawing 3 cards to an ace will only cost you money in this game, even drawing 2 cards is not a strong play in most situations, but only suckers draw 3. The starting hands you are looking for are 3 cards to an 8 low Padooki, by only playing these hands you will be ahead of your opponents most of the time in the hand. With 3 draws quite a few of your opponents will play pretty much any hand, try to keep from snickering when someone tells you they drew 3 cards to a 4. Believe me it will happen!

Another important factor to keep in mind when playing Padooki is; when the cards are reshuffled the majority will be high cards, remember they are made up of discards and hands people did not want to play. At this point you will want to have a made hand and have your opponents drawing.

Some other basic strategies you might find useful until you have played the game enough are,

Always draw to a Padooki, standing pat with A 2 3 4 will get you beat by a K high Padooki.

Never draw more than 1 card on the first draw except when you are one of the last to act and you can draw for only 1 bet. In this situation you will also want to only draw 2 if you hold 2 cards to a Padooki ranked 4 and under.

Never I repeat NEVER draw more than 1 card on any subsequent round.

Follow these guidelines to the game until you can put together your own playbook for Padooki. Padooki will reward the more disciplined card players out there, and punish the action players, as you will find this is a game of very complex strategy.

Authors note: I have very limited experience with this game and may be mistaken about the specifics of the game, if any experienced Padooki players would like to point out a rule mistake I have made, or some more advanced strategies please post them in the Pokerpages Beginners Forum, titled Padooki.