For as long as I’ve been playing Magic, people have compared it to other games, especially when trying to explain it to others. "Oh, it’s sort of like chess, but you get to choose your pieces" is a fairly common one, but anything that makes it seem more mainstream has probably been done many times over.* That is, after all, the point: you compare it to another game so it will seem more socially acceptable. Whether that’s a good behavior (it’s not) is neither here nor there, and isn’t the real point here.
See, as Magic has grown in popularity and dominance in the CCG field, other card games have started comparing themselves to it, which is only to be expected – it’s the big dog, the most mainstream of the genre, and other games should be using it as the measuring stick. Even so, it was still just the king of a kingdom labeled by the public as Dorkland. More recently, though, the surge in poker popularity (especially among our demographic) has given Magic its own publicly-embraced half-brother to latch onto when a player tries to "justify" what he thinks of as a shameful hobby. It’s not like chess anymore; it’s like poker! Like it or not, we’re leaning on poker now; I just never thought poker would lean back.
Then I saw Dead Hand Chaos Poker, a game that tries to market itself as poker with a gamer’s twist. If regular cards are too boring for you, this has you covered.
At first glance, Dead Hand Poker appears to be a normal deck of cards, albeit it cards with some rather dramatic art (most of the face cards sport some form of skeleton). Look closer, though, and you’ll see that more than half the cards have words embossed on their surface. For instance, hold the King of Hearts to the light, and you’ll read "The hand with the low heart is dead" – if the King gets put into play at a showdown, whatever hand holds the lowest Heart card dies on the spot. Suddenly, Jacks full of Fours isn’t quite as impressive, and there’s a chance for anybody to knock off the monster hand.
Beyond all of that, though, this is a game that could sell well to the general public, riding the poker craze into many groups. It won’t suddenly snap completely distinct games, like Magic, into the mainstream with it, but it could well be the proverbial single step that can get us headed that direction. It can show your average casual poker player that there’s more to like than just the standard games – mixing it up on occasion with something more than wild cards won’t give you cooties.
I’ll go into a little more depth about the game itself: According to the standard rules, you just play any poker game as normal, and once the hand goes to a showdown and hands are revealed, you just flip the top card of the deck. That’s the card that gets "played," and it changes the winner of the hand about 20% of the time (according to the makers). The problem with that method is that there’s not really much strategy – sure, you can calculate the implied odds of the bullet, but it’s still more Russian Roulette than poker. That appeals far more to the gambler’s instincts than the gamer’s, and while that might make it more popular with pure poker players, it’s not my cup of tea.
But hey, don’t be deterred! Anyone who’s ever sat down to a friend’s table knows the meaning of the words "house rules," and these are more than willing to come and offer Dead Hand a… well, you know. Even just off the top of my head, here’s a simple Hold’Em variant that actually lets the players strategize their Dead Hand cards: Each player gets three hole cards instead of two, and at some point in the hand (immediately after the deal, immediately after the flop, or just before hands are revealed are the three options I’d recommend trying), each player chooses one of those three to be his pot card. The other two are now their regular hole cards that they’ll use to make a hand, and everybody’s third card takes effect at the showdown. (If every hand ends up killed, just award the pot normally.)
You could also use the standard rules as a base, but give more control to the players. For instance, when the cards are revealed, give the second-ranked player a chance to "buy" one card (either for a set amount or a percentage of the pot) off the top of the deck to try to claim the pot. This lets them actually see what they’re up against and better figure their chances of stealing the pot. If that’s a little too favorable for the underdog for your tastes, give each player a chance to buy "insurance" just before hands are flipped – one card that will be revealed and put into effect only if the "insured" player turns out the loser. It’s hardly an exaggeration to say that there are almost as many ways to implement the Dead Hand cards as there are poker variants, and they all give the games a little more kick for those that aren’t quite as into the regular rules.
In a perfect world, none of us would worry about telling others what our hobbies are (here’s looking at you, Gadiel), but nobody ever said it was. This makes for a decent stepping stone toward understanding, and although it won’t have all your poker buddies begging for a ride to the Prerelease, it still makes for a far more interesting change of pace than just deciding to play Pineapple for a hand.
On the docket tomorrow: a "miniatures" game you may remember reading about in this very space not long ago. Don’t touch that dial.
Signing off,
Andy Clautice
andy dot clautice at gmail dot com
* — Of course, those who’ve never actually played like to compare it to Dungeons and Dragons, which makes about as much sense as comparing Scrabble and Tic-Tac-Toe – sure, they use some of the same source material, but the similarities end there.