Some friends and I have played a friendly, low-stakes Texas Hold ‘Em poker game for years. One player wanted to play a night of silly, rule-breaking poker for his birthday.

I put together 15 variants, with inspiration and copying from here, here, and especially here. These aren’t intended to be long-term playable games with polished rules, just wacky variations for a silly night.

I wrote these out on a stack of index cards. We played each variant for one round of dealing, so 6-7 hands of each. I only revealed one variant before we played:

I put the variants in order to escalate complexity, to set up the Fuck Yeah/Fuck No joke, to provide a breather after the complexity of Auction House, and to end with Double Trouble because it was the idea that kicked all this off.

  1. Bonus Start with 1 extra hole card, face up.
  2. Roswell Start with 2 hole cards down and 1 up. After river betting: draw an extra hole card, do an extra betting round.
  3. Trashy Start with 3 hole cards. After each betting round: players select 1 hole card and simultaneously pass it to the player on their left.
  4. Stairstep Five betting rounds, each round you get 1 hole card and 1 community card.
  5. Fuck Yeah After each betting round: draw 1 hole card, then discard 1.
  6. Fuck No After each betting round: discard 1 hole card, then draw 1.
  7. My Ship Will Come In After the turn betting: reveal 2 cards. Those ranks are wild.
  8. Regret Start with 5 hole cards. After the flop, turn, and river betting: discard 1 hole card face up near you.
  9. Dead Man’s Chest All folded cards go to the chest, down. If the hand ends early, nothing special happens. After river betting, reveal the chest. If the dead hand wins, the pot rolls over.
  10. Swapsies At start, turn up a 5 card sideboard. After each betting round, each player may swap 1 hole card with a sideboard card. Keep it face up.
  11. Auction House Deal 3 boards. Before each betting round is bidding. Going around once, each active player may bid chips to any 1 board. The board with the most chips is the real one. All bid chips go to the pot.
  12. Death on the Nile After river betting: roll a die. Count from the first turn card to discard and replace 1 board card. (Ignore 6, nothing changes.)
  13. Haggle Any 2 players, even folded, may agree to a table stakes price or for free, swap 1 hole card, seen or unseen.
  14. River of Blood If the final community card is black, bet and end normally. If it’s red, bet and then repeat until you get a black card.
  15. Double Trouble Shuffle together 2 full decks, include the 4 jokers as wilds. A pair/trip/quad with a suited pair outranks one without.

Except where noted otherwise, it’s Texas Hold ‘Em rules, hole cards are face down, and actions are limited to the players who haven’t folded.