Because trying to form a good hand is quite easy in this game, in order to make things a bit different, this game is often played as a lowball game. This is in order to give the game an extra twist, as well as to add more conditions that determine who wins in a game. In lowball poker, the person with the lowest hand wins the game, but there are certain conditions which a player must meet before being called the winner. The most common rule is used in the lowball version of the five-card draw: the ace-to-five low, where the lowest hand you can achieve is the A-2-3-4-5 combination. The game is played as you would a classic five-card draw poker game, but those with cards greater than nine (or eight) are not accepted as low hands, and do not qualify; and for those who qualify, the lowest hand they can get wins. If you’re not looking to change the game so much but you want to make things different, then try turning your game in to a lowball game.

The standard five-card draw, being the most basic of the draw poker varieties, is also very flexible; however, one has to consider that because it is a very basic game, most modifications involve adding something to the game to change it (this is, of course, in contrast with the other games, where you can either add or subtract a factor to the game to be able to change it up). As such, here’s an easy way of changing the game by adding something – add an extra draw round. There are two games that follow this very basic change: the double draw and the triple draw. We’ll focus on the double draw right now first.

The double draw is a variation of the five-card draw where, as the name suggests, there are two drawing rounds instead of one. Consequently, there will be three betting rounds for this kind of draw poker – one after the dealing of the cards, and one after each drawing round. The game is pretty simple: Begin the game as you would the standard five-card draw, and then begin the first betting round with the person to the immediate left of the dealer, ending the round with the dealer. Then the players take turns to discard their cards and draw, or stay pat, and another round of betting takes place. The additional round of drawing takes place after that, and then the final round of betting takes place, after which the showdown takes place. The extra drawing round makes the higher hands easier to form than when you only have one drawing round, and so this works to the advantage of all players. That one change makes the game all the more challenging though, as achieving high hands is easy, but achieving higher hands than your competitors is not quite as easy given that equal opportunity.

Because the standard five-card draw is a very very basic poker game, it is so easy to modify without doing much damage to the game. It also serves as the perfect template for the other games to be developed from. An example of a spiced-up game of the five-card draw is the game of Gardena Jackpots, or simply, Jackpots. This was named after Gardena, California, where the game used to be very popular, and was second only to lowball. Jackpots follows the basic five-card draw more or less, but a joker is added to the deck as a bug card, which makes gameplay more interesting. Also, the initial betting changes in that a player is required to have a hand of jacks or better at the first dealing of cards already before he can be entitled to open the betting round. If no one opens the bet, then a new deal takes place. Also, just in case the other players doubt the legitimacy of a person to open the betting round, the player who has a qualifying hand has to keep the cards he discarded nearby in order to be able to show it as proof to the other players. The rest of the game is played like your usual five-card draw, with the joker providing whatever card it is you’re missing to be able to make a hand.

As you can see, it is a very good example of spicing up a game in order to be able to keep things interesting. There are more modifications done to draw poker that gave it a lot of variations, so do watch out for those. In the meantime, try playing jackpots – you might just like it.