Poker - Playing A Hand Pat
“Now might I do it, pat.”
Hamlet. Act III., Scene 3d.
To play a hand pat the limit should be bet both before and after the draw,
and the game will seldom be found to be worth the candle. The only hand to stand
pat on, other than a genuine one, is a hand without a pair and nothing to draw
to.
In the Southern States, I have heard, many players consider it almost a point
of honor to stand pat on a hand called a “kilter” – that is,
a hand with a nine for the highest and a two for the lowest card, and no chance
of making such a hand by drawing, and the only thing to be done is to discard
the whole or play pat. This hand is No. 1 in the subdivision I have attempted
to make to simplify matters.
We will now suppose A, B, C, D, and E have discarded and drawn, and so completed
their hands. Before proceeding to the serious business of betting or bluffing,
let us glance at hands in general, so as to form an idea of what A, B, C, D,
and E may be expected to have.
Sequences, flushes, and fulls are the complete, we might say perfect, hands.
All the others could be better.
In the enumeration of eleven poker hands which I venture to make, I make no
mention of “skips,” “round the corners,” “tigers,”
and “blazes.” They have no place in the regular game, and should
be tabooed.
To the novice I would say by way of explanation that a “blaze,”
when played, consists of five face or picture cards and beats two pairs. A “skip”
is a species of straight, in which the cards do not run consecutively, but with
the interval of one between each, thus: Two, four, six, eight, and ten, or five,
seven, nine, jack, and king. This hand, when played, beats two pairs.
A “round-the-corner” straight is king, ace, two, three, and four,
or jack, queen, king, ace, and two. When played, the hand ranks as a straight,
but any straight will beat it.
The “tiger” consists of the lowest possible combination of five
cards: two, three, four, five, and seven. Its place is between a straight and
a flush.
The value of any hand is only relative, since its apparent value is destroyed
by the delightful element of uncertainty as to the actual value of any other
player’s hand. It has been said, however, that if you go in on a pair
of face cards only, in the long run you will come out better than those players
who go in on smaller pairs. This would be too cautious a game, however, to be
popular at a social table.
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