Selection / Rejection Rules

Selection / Rejection is played with a standard 52-card deck with no jokers and no wild cards, by up to seven players. It is also known as Want it? Want it? Got it!, occasionally as Polish, and sometimes as Pass the Trash, a name more often used for Anaconda.

Each player ends with seven cards, three face down and four face up, and makes the best five-card hand. High hands are ranked by the standard poker hand rankings.

The pot is split between the best high hand and the best low hand, according to the players' declarations. The ranking of low hands shall be agreed before play; it is usually ace-to-five, in which aces are low and straights and flushes do not count.

Each player antes. The dealer deals two cards face down to each player.

The four face-up cards are then dealt in four dealing rounds, using the offering procedure in Article 3. A seventh card is finally dealt face down to each player, as in seven-card stud.

Each dealing round has a leader. In the first dealing round the leader is the player to the dealer's left. In each later round the leader is the next active player to the left of the previous leader.

The dealer turns the top card of the deck face up and offers it to the leader, who may accept it or reject it.

3.2(a) If the leader rejects it, the card is offered to the next player to the left.

3.2(b) If that player also rejects it, it is offered to the next player, who must take it.

Once a card has been taken, the dealer turns up the next card and offers it to the player to the left of the one who took the previous card. That player may accept or reject it in the same way.

No card may be rejected more than twice. The third player to whom a card is offered must accept it.

Players who have already received a card in the current dealing round are skipped when cards are offered. Near the end of a round, a rejected card passes to the next player who still needs one, even if that is the player who first rejected it; since no card may be rejected more than twice, the last player without a card will always end up with one.

When every active player has received one face-up card, the dealing round ends and there is a betting round.

There is a betting round after each of the four dealing rounds, and a final betting round after the seventh card is dealt face down. As usual in stud poker, each round is begun by the player with the best card or hand showing.

After the final betting round, each remaining player declares whether they are going for high, low or both. The method of declaring shall be agreed before play; declarations are usually made simultaneously, with chips held in a closed hand.

The best high hand among the players declaring high and the best low hand among those declaring low split the pot. If no one declares one side, the players on the other side compete for the whole pot.

A player who declares both usually must win, or tie, both halves. A player who fails wins nothing.

Rejecting a card sends it to your left-hand neighbour. Rejecting a card that would help them can cost you as much as accepting a poor card.

The third player offered a card has no choice, so the value of rejecting depends on who is next in line.