Scarney - Icelandic or not? (1 Viewer)

[Poker Zombie]

I love Icelandic Scarney. I will try to call it at least one a session at a meetup.

Tolerate the Canadian version, but do not "like" it. I'll play along, but if I'm tired, I'll take a nap instead.

"Regular" Scarney, I do not care for at all. Who folded? Didn't you have a card still? If I have to play the game sober, I'm not playing. It's unfathomable to me how many sober nits want to play this game with their "I always want to know that I won before I bet" attitudes.

 

[bergs]

Ok

3rd proposal:

You fault all your cards. You have the nut low.
you now have to drink a pint of Leonard Ritas' before showdown or you are in default and are OUT.

This is literally the only good idea you have had in the many years I have known you.

The community unanimously accepts your amendment to Scarney Law.

 

[MatB]

This is literally the only good idea you have had in the many years I have known you.

The community unanimously accepts your amendment to Scarney Law.

I felt like this proposal would appeal to you.

Also this is at least the 2nd good idea I’ve had. When I remember what it is I’ll remind you

 

[Machine]

Half the game is achieving a low via discards. So if you do it perfectly, and lose all your cards, you get penalized?

I also don’t understand why you need to have a card and make a big call risking losing it and losing the pot. That’s literally calling for maybe half the pot, which everyone here tells me is a -EV strategy.

I just think it turns an interesting two way game into an uninteresting one where it’s correct to just play for the high only and back into the low.

While we’re at it, I don’t love the kill Scarney where the top board goes away if the card pops on the discard board. A shitty pair often ends up backing into the high inadvertently.

Scarney is a super interesting game and involves a fair amount of hand reading but it’s the rare game that suffers from variations designed to artificially create action or suspense.

I just don’t like the “back into half the pot” aspect of the variants. They seem like bingo, even for circus games.

Take derailment - sure you can back up to making a board like you would double board or any other game, but the goal is still to have a powerful draw or made nut hand on at least 2 (preferably 3) boards - so there is still a ton of board contextual strategy here.

I do think however that we’d benefit from something that denotes a cardless live Scarney hand. Something like this…

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Shh don't tell anyone, I got you bro