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A PAIR OF SHIT IN HELL
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I haven't played or even thought about this in 17-18 years, so let me see if I can reconstruct the specifics...it was a good'un.
In the early to mid '80s, before he turned it into a cable-TV circus, Art Fein hosted a string of poker whatsems at his Hollywood digs that were, well, friendly as all fucking heck. With a core of regulars that included Sam Graham and Paul Body (hi, Paul!), and occasionals like Chuck E. Weiss and Dave and Phil Alvin, the games were for ultra-low stakes, half a step up from pocket change. Since none of us could play worth a ding dang god-damn, that seemed the way to go.
Until one Sunday night when these two sharpies Art invited cleaned everybody out in half an hour, none of the players ever took the whole thing too seriously--the winning/losing, the "ritual"--it was just something to accompany the beer, the popcorn, the blah blah blah.
In retrospect, what was most remarkable about these get-togethers was how tolerant people tended to be of each other's cheesy choice of games, both standard and invented. Lotsa times a night, hands would get dealt of cutesy bullcrap like Pass the Trash, Texas Hold 'Em, seven stud with all sorts of dumb things wild, but rarely did anyone spit, cuss or even wince.
In this miasma of cheesy and dumb, I came up with a game that actually had some viability, one that nobody seemed to mind too much at all: a Pair of Shit in Hell. The object of this five stud hoot was to make a pair with your hole card, i.e., the highest pair utilizing a hole card would win (two competing pairs in a single game only happened maybe twice). The rest of what you had in your hand was irrelevant...four aces didn't mean dick if they were all exposed.
If nobody made a hole-card pair in a given hand, the pot would remain and you'd deal again until one or more people finally got a proper pair. (Lacking such a pair, you could try betting like an idiot to bluff the rest of the table into dropping out.) Though I don't remember exactly, I assume that if two players got the same pair (two pairs of nines, for inst), the remainder of their hands would IN THIS CASE ALONE determine the winner, but in all the times we played (20? 30?) this never occurred.
Why nobody hated Pair of Shit I've got no idea. Less dumb and cute than Pass the Trash? Dunno. But try it some time, okay?