A Tie in Poker.

I was reading this page on Tie breakers in Poker, because I considered that I might want to write a poker game one day.

I was wondering what was the best way to write a tie in poker where both sides loses (like say Strip Poker)?

How would I go about portraying that while staying true to the rules?

If you look at what you linked, it's not possible to have a tie in most cases.

Yeah. I thought as much.

I guess I can't do it unless I Play it as a massive joke.

Like managing to set water on fire or something.

You could always invoke "House Rules" — that is, a set of non-standard rules agreed to by all the players in the game. But in general, poker is not conducive to having ties.

Hmmm.

Then I will do it as a joke.

Because the fact that you shouldn't be able to tie in Poker makes it funnier.

Even under the rules in your link, a tie is possible. It's unlikely, because it would require each player to have identical value hands (the same values in individual cards, but in different suits), but it is possible, and that's enough for a story.

Oh.

Okay then. Either way, I got something to work with.

Edit: For shits and giggles, what would be an example of hands with identical values?

I don't know enough about Poker to know what they would look like.

edited 22nd Dec '13 3:28:04 PM by Handsomerob

For a lot of card games, suit is considered a tiebreaker. Is that not the case in Poker?

Nope. Suit is irrelevant, unless house rules (see my post above) make it relevant. For instance, one common house rule is "One-eyed Jacks are wild". This means that a person who has one of the two "one-eyed Jacks" (I believe they are spades and diamonds — the two Jacks that are traditionally drawn so that they are in profile and only one eye is visible) can declare that they're treating that card as any other card of their choice. In that case, the suit of the Jack is relevant (the Jack of hearts can't be played as a wild card but the Jack of spades can be), but unless the player is using it to fill a flush, a straight flush, or a royal flush, what suit they declare it to be is still irrelevant, if they even bother to declare a suit, which they probably won't.

Handsome Rob: two identical poker hands:

Both hands have one pair — the 10s. So the tie breaker would be which one has the higher card as the kicker (the highest card that's not part of the combination) but both of them have an ace. So it's still tied. Go to the next highest card — both of them have a 7. Still tied. It comes down to the final card in the hand — whoever has the higher card here will win. But they both have a 4. So the hand ends tied and the two players split the pot.

edited 22nd Dec '13 6:38:33 PM by Madrugada

Now, there are some hands that cannot tie unless you're using multiple decks, wild cards, or both. In a one-deck, no-wild-cards game, you can't have a tie between two hands that both have three-of-a-kind, because there aren't six cards in the deck all of the same rank, so two people can't both have three fives, say. Same for four-of-a-kind and full houses. A full house is a pair of one card rank and three-of-a-kind of a different card rank (like A-A-8-8-8).

Cool.

I'll keep this in mind.

So it doesn't matter what the suit is (whether it Clubs, Ace, Spades or Diamond), if you have both players have the same card, it's a tie until one of them gets a higher card then.

So if you are trying to break a card, and both have a Ten, it's still a tie until one person gets a higher or lower card.

That's useful.

edited 22nd Dec '13 7:42:35 PM by Handsomerob

Yep. It's like the card game "War" that way. The face value of the cards and the ranking of the various hands are all that matters. Suit doesn't enter into it.