Jimulacrum
Full House
My Wednesday-night crew started playing Scarney a year ago, give or take. At first we played standard Scarney, but one of our players (George) wanted to try a version where the kill board also kills the live board cards, and thus "Georgie" was born. I am aware now that this game is called "Brutal Scarney" or something like that, but "Georgie" stuck with my crew, so that's what they call it now, and that's what I'll call it here.
Holy shit they love this game. I didn't expect it at first because the rule that kills your hand is pretty cutthroat compared to how casual this game is, but it has happened several times to different players (myself at least twice, including once yesterday), and people still call the game constantly. Only player I think we lost to this was one guy who only sat down a few times and may or may not have come back anyway. He was so excited about his quad queens that he forgot to discard a 10 on a later round. Lost the whole pot and we haven't seen him at the club since. RIP Satchel Nick.
Bear in mind that we play all games in a bomb-pot format, so there's an ante of 1 and action starts on the flop; there's no preflop betting.
Now, onto the games. We've played around a lot with Georgie and with variants that fall back on its rules. This is a list of Georgie-inspired variants we've played.
Holy shit they love this game. I didn't expect it at first because the rule that kills your hand is pretty cutthroat compared to how casual this game is, but it has happened several times to different players (myself at least twice, including once yesterday), and people still call the game constantly. Only player I think we lost to this was one guy who only sat down a few times and may or may not have come back anyway. He was so excited about his quad queens that he forgot to discard a 10 on a later round. Lost the whole pot and we haven't seen him at the club since. RIP Satchel Nick.
Bear in mind that we play all games in a bomb-pot format, so there's an ante of 1 and action starts on the flop; there's no preflop betting.
Now, onto the games. We've played around a lot with Georgie and with variants that fall back on its rules. This is a list of Georgie-inspired variants we've played.
- Standard Georgie: Each player gets 6 hole cards. Board structure is 3-2-1. This can only be played 6-handed or shorter.
- Modified for 7-handed: 5 hole cards and 3-2-1 board structure.
- Modified for 8-handed: 5 hole cards and 3-1-1 board structure (and only 1 burn card).
- Big-Hand Georgie: Each player gets more than 6 hole cards; the highest we've gone is 9. Board structure is 3-2-1. This can only be played very shorthanded, and honestly I don't recommend it. I think 6 hole cards is the sweet spot, and any additional cards add more confusion than value.
- Evil Georgie: Each player gets 4 hole cards. Board structure is 3-2-1. This can be played as big as 9-handed. Rules are almost the same as standard Georgie, but what makes it "evil" is that if the board kills all your cards, instead of having the nut low, your hand is dead. This is mainly an adjustment to make it playable 9-handed without risking an excessive number of 0-point nut lows and splits. Honestly, we didn't even play this enough to have anyone lose all 4 cards, but I expect it would happen with some frequency.
- Modified for 10-handed: 4 hole cards and 3-1-1 board structure (and only 1 burn card).
- Low Points Dramaha: Plays mechanically the same as Dramaha, but half the pot goes to the best Omaha hand, and half goes to lowest point count in the hole per Georgie rules. Can be adjusted to have more or fewer hole cards and max discards to accommodate the number of players, since you're only counting points and don't have to make a 5-card poker hand.
- Low Points Dramahold'em: Plays mechanically the same as Dramaha, but half the pot goes to the best Hold'em hand (i.e., any number of hole and board cards totaling 5), and half goes to lowest point count in the hole. Same deal with being able to adjust hole cards and discards by number of players.
