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The Rules for Gardena Jackpots Draw Poker.

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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