The Penguin Book of Card Games: Everything You Need to Know to Play Over 250 Games (180 page)

were designed to achieve has been more easily done by introducing

wild card, spits, and the deal of more than five cards. The freak

hands listed below range from old favourites to complete novelties.

Bent A non-paired, non-flush, non-straight. See Dutch and Irish.

Bicycle Lowbal hand 5432A. Total 1024 including flushes.

Big bobtail Four-card straight flush, plus one idler. Total 2032, of

which 948 are not also straights, flushes, or pairs.

Big dog An Ace-high, Nine-low six-card straight with one missing.

Relatives include Big cat (K-8), Woolworth, or Five and dime (T-5),

Lit le cat (8-3), and Lit le dog (7-2). Cats are also cal ed Tigers.

There are 4096 of each, of which 16 are flushes.

Blaze Any five court cards. Total 792, of which 24 are fours, 144

ful houses, 192

threes, and 432 two pairs.

Bobtail see Big and Lit le.

Cherry Five cards of the same colour but not flush. Total 126,412,

of which

76,620 are not also pairs, two pairs, or straights.

Dutch straight (Skip straight) An alternating sequence, lowest

9753A, highest

AQT86. Total 6144, of which 24 are flushes.

Flash In Joker Poker, the Joker plus any one card of every suit.

Total 17,160, of

which 264 are wild-card straights.

Fourflush Not uncommon. Usual y ranked between two pairs and

threes, and

above fourstraights, thoughindefianceofmathematical accuracy.

There are

111,540 in al , of which 29,088 are pairs, 600 straights, and 1896

fourstraights.

Fourfright A fourstraight-cum-fourflush, such as A987 6, other

thanabobtail (like A 9876). Total 3792.

Fourstraight Even more mathematical y confused than fourflushes,

there are

97,792 of the wretched things.

97,792 of the wretched things.

Irish straight The ultimate bent, or non-hand: five dif erent ranks,

no two of

them consecutive, and not al alternating (otherwise it’s a Dutch

straight).

There are 86,016, of which 336 are flushes.

Kilter or pelter Another non-hand: nothing higher than a Nine,

and no Ace,

pair, straight, or flush. There are 53,040, some overlapping with

other freak

hands, such as bents and republicans.

Lit le bobtail A hand containing an unbroken three-card straight

flush. Total

52,260, of which 28,704 are not also pairs or bet er.

Monkey flush A hand containing three cards of a suit but not in

sequence

(otherwise it is a Lit le bobtail). Total 812,136, of which 770,160

are not also

pairs or bet er.

Pelter See Kilter.

Pet Generic term for any five-card hand equivalent to a one-gap

six-card straight

(see Big dog, etc.).

Republican or Puritan Respectively the American and British

terms for a hand

containing no courts or pairs. There are 258,052, of which 250,924

are neither

straight nor flush.

Round-the-corner straight One in which Ace counts high and low

simul

taneously, al owing such combinations as QKA23. There are 3072,

of which

12 are round-the-corner straight flushes. Their introduction does not

af ect

the relative ranking of the straight and straight flush, but has more