If
you ever find Pineapple Poker in a casino it will usually
be played High/Low, but more often you can find this game
online. Pinapple Poker is a spin off from Texas Holde'm
in that there are cards dealt followed by Flop, Turn, and
River community cards. However in Pinapple Poker you recieve
3 cards instead of 2 like Hold'em. Then on the flop, after
the betting has ended, you must decide which one of your
3 to dicard . So after the dicard the game is played exactly
like Hold'em. In Pineapple High/Low however, after the river
the pot is split between the highest Hold'em hand and the
lowest five cards from Ace through eight in any order. If
3 or more low cards, (A-8) do not appear on the board after
the River then the entire pot will go to the highest hand
just like Hold'em, and if there is a tie between high hands
the pot will be split just like Hold'em. Pinapple High/Low
is very different from Omaha High/Low because you don't
have to use 2 cards, you can use 1, 2, or none as in holdem.
So when 4 low cards hit the table you can just one from
your hand and the 4 from the table to have a low hand. This
would not give you a low hand in Omaha High/Low.
The
below example often occurs in this game when 4 low cards
hit the table.
Notice the left player here had to even
throw down one of his 10's and break up his pair since the
Flop gave him three 4's. The center player flopped two pair
with his Ace and 7 so he had to give up his diamonds and
his Jack, and finally the right player had 4 hearts with
his Ace-Queen so his black 6 was out of the question. As
you see in the end the three 4's by the first player was
still good for the high since now hearts or a 3rd seven
came. However there were four different low cards on the
table and since you don't HAVE to use both of your cards
in any form of Pineapple, both players with the Ace had
a low. They both had A-3-4-7-8. Now whether or not the Ace-7
player wanted to use his 7 or he still had the same low
to it didn't matter. So you should easily see that 50% went
to the 3 four's (4, 4, 4, 10, 8) and 25% went to each A-3-4-7-8.
Now if the two players with and Ace had played ONLY against
each other, the Ace-7 player would have received 75% instead
of 25% since his two pair of sevens and fours would have
beat the Ace-Queen's 'Ace-High' and their lows were equal.
This
example will be very easy to understand. Both players used
both cards after the flop.
The left player threw away his king on the
Flop since his Ace-Deuce gave him the best low possible
with the five, eight, and three on the table. Also the Ace-2-3-5
part of his low had a small straight possibility missing
just the 4 as well. Accordingly, the right player threw
away his 10 since no hearts or a 10 were on the first 3
cards. By the River card or last card, the left player remained
with his low of Ace-2-3-5-8 and the right player took the
high with two pair of 9's and 3's with the Queen.
Strange things happen in this game, that's why it's full
name is 'Crazy' Pineapple. Try to see if you can figure
out why the below results are correct before you read the
explanation.
Well in Pineapple as in Hold'em you can
use NONE of you cards and just play the cards on the table.
Usually you would have folded if you couldn't use either
card, but not always. Here these to players bet and raised
each other before the flop and continued to bet throughout
the Flop, Turn, and River card but the reason why the player
with Kings didn't win 100% is as follows: Since five
different low cards were on the table and neither player
had one, they were both forced to play the table up
cards themselves as there low hands. This has a poker term
of "Playing the Board". So Kings take the high for 50% and
the other 50% is split for both lows of (2, 4, 5, 7, 8).
