Six Card Open Draw Rules

Six Card Open Draw was devised by Bruce Leban and published on pagat.com. It is a form of draw poker in which part of the discarding is done face up, so that players have more information to bet on.

The game uses a standard 52-card deck with no wild cards and is limited to five players. With more players, two decks may be shuffled together.

Hands are ranked by the standard poker hand rankings. The object is to win the pot with the best five-card hand at showdown, or by making a bet that no other player calls.

Each player antes, and the dealer deals six cards face down to each player, one at a time, clockwise from the dealer's left.

Each player may discard up to four cards face down and receives the same number of replacements from the deck. A player may keep all six cards.

There is no betting before this draw. The first round of betting follows it, so each player bets knowing how many cards every opponent replaced.

After the first betting round, each active player discards exactly one card face up, leaving a hand of five cards.

The source does not say whether the face-up discards are made in turn or all at once. The dealer shall announce the method before the deal.

A final round of betting follows the open discard, and then the showdown.

The source does not set a betting order. The usual draw-poker practice is that the first active player to the dealer's left acts first on each round.

If more than one player remains after the final round, hands are shown and the best five-card hand wins the pot. Identical hands split the pot.

If all but one player folds at any point, the remaining player wins the pot without showing.

The same idea extends to seven cards: see Seven Card Open Draw. Open discarding can also be added to five-card draw, as in Five Card Open Draw (simple) and Five Card Open Draw (sequential).