Crazy 4 of Spades Rules

Crazy 4 of Spades is a variant of Five Card Draw contributed to pagat.com by Ryan Turnbaugh. It uses a standard 52-card deck, and the best five-card high hand wins.

The four of spades is always wild.

A player who holds the four of spades may also use any other four in their hand (clubs, hearts or diamonds) as a wild card.

In a hand without the four of spades, the other fours are natural fours.

Hands are ranked by the standard poker hand rankings. With all four fours wild, five of a kind is possible. The source does not rank it; the usual practice is that five of a kind beats a straight flush, and the group shall confirm this before play.

Each player antes and receives five cards face down. A betting round follows.

Each remaining player may then discard and draw up to three cards, or up to four if they hold an ace. A common practice in draw games is that a player who draws four shall show the ace they are keeping; the group shall agree whether this is required.

A second betting round follows the draw, then the showdown.

The remaining players show their hands, and the best five-card hand, using wild cards as set out in article 1, wins.

The winner of a hand collects nothing but takes a token.

If a different player wins the next hand, the token passes to that player.

When the player holding the token wins again, that player collects the pot, and the token goes back to the centre for the winner of the next hand.

The same method may be used with ordinary Five Card Draw or Jacks or Better, where pots tend to be small.