How to Play Cincinnati Liz Poker

Objective

Win the pot by holding the best poker hand at the showdown, or by betting so that everyone else folds. You build your hand from ten cards: the five in your hand and the five on the table. Use any five of them, in any mix.

Because a whole rank of cards turns wild, big hands are common. Full houses, four of a kind and even five of a kind show up far more often than in a game with no wild cards.

Setup

Agree on the stakes and the betting limit before you start. Every player puts an ante into the pot. The dealer deals five cards face down to each player, one at a time, then deals five cards face down in a row in the middle of the table. These are the table cards, sometimes called the widow, and they belong to everyone.

With eight players the deal uses 45 of the 52 cards, so there is room for a full table.

How to play

After the deal there is a round of betting, starting with the player on the dealer’s left. You can check (if no one has bet), bet, call, raise or fold, just as in any poker game.

Then the dealer turns the first table card face up, and there is another round of betting. The dealer turns the table cards one at a time, with a betting round after each, until all five are face up. That makes six betting rounds in all.

The wild rank is only settled when the last table card is turned. Until then, the lowest card showing is just the current candidate, and a lower card can still replace it. After the final betting round, everyone still in shows their cards. Each player names their best five-card hand from their own five and the five on the table, counting every card of the wild rank as any card they like.

1. 1Ante and take five cards face down
2. 2Bet on your hand
3. 3Turn one table card, then bet again
4. 4Repeat until all five table cards are up
5. 5Show down: best five of your ten cards wins

Scoring

The best hand at the showdown wins the whole pot. Hands rank in the usual poker order, with five of a kind added at the top because wild cards make it possible.

A hand made with wild cards ranks the same as one made without them. If two hands tie, the highest cards outside the main combination decide it, and a true tie splits the pot.

Variations

Middle card wild: some rule books make the third (middle) table card wild instead of the lowest one. It is a simpler rule because the wild card is fixed as soon as that card is turned.

One wild card only: some tables make just the lowest table card wild, not the other cards of its rank. That keeps the hands closer to normal poker.

Plain Cincinnati: play the same deal with no wild cards at all. Low Hole Cincinnati is another twist, where your own lowest hole card, and others of its rank, are wild for you alone.

Tips from the table

Raise your sights. With up to four wild cards in play, three of a kind is a modest hand and a small straight rarely holds up. Think of a full house as an average winner.

Watch the low cards. If you hold a pair of threes and a three is the lowest table card so far, your threes may be about to go wild. A two on the last turn takes that away and makes the twos wild instead, so a small pair can swing from the best hand at the table to nothing.

Fold early hands that need the table to do everything. The players who stay to the end usually hold wild cards, and you do not want to pay five more rounds to learn that.

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