
Standard Five-Card Draw Poker
Other Draw Poker Games
Gardena Jackpots Draw Poker (Jacks to Open)
Gardena Jackpots draw poker is played as five card draw with standard poker hand values, and with a
single joker in the deck acting as a bug (a form of wild
card). It is always played with an
ante and no blinds.
On the first betting round, no player is allowed to open the
betting unless his hand already contains a pair of jacks or
a better poker hand. Other players who checked on the first
round may subsequently call or raise if someone else opens.
If no poker player opens, a new deal begins and everyone antes
again into the same pot. The player who opened the
betting keeps his discarded cards near him on the table so
that he can prove, if necessary, that he had a sufficient
opening poker hand. For example, a player with the K, J, 9,
and 7 of clubs and the J of hearts has a pair of jacks and
may open. He may wish to break openers in this case by
discarding the jack of hearts in an attempt to make the club
flush, so he keeps the discarded jack set aside to prove that he was entitled to open.
The game is named after the city of Gardena, California,
where this poker game was especially popular in the 1970s (though
it has always been secondary to
lowball poker games). At that
time, there were more public poker tables in that small city
than in all the rest of the United States. Public
poker rooms are still a big industry there, though Las
Vegas, Atlantic City, and other locations now have many more
poker rooms than they did at that time. Because jacks
or better to open was the primary form of high-hand draw poker played
there, traditional draw poker was often described by the phrase guts to open.
In home poker games, it is
common that when a deal is passed out (that is, when no one
opens), the players re-ante and the qualifier to open is
raised to a pair of queens. If that deal is passed
out, the qualifier is raised to kings, and finally to aces.
This is called progressive jackpots.

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