Homestar Runner Wiki Forum

I continue to hope and wait for a resumption in regular HSR updates. In the meantime, I bought and played (and still play quite a bit) Poker Night at the Inventory. I was, of course, amused at Strong Bad claiming to have a straight flush and a full house in the same hand- which requires a minimum of an eight card hand to be possible.

So I came up with Strongbadian Poker.

Start with Eight Card Stud, dealt normally (2-5-1, maximum six players).

At the showdown, players make the best possible five-card hand, as in normal Seven or Eight Card Stud. However, after doing this, the players then make the next best possible hand out of the three leftover cards and any two of the card from their first hand. This second hand must be at LEAST two pair to score a combination unless your top hand is a straight and/or flush. Combination hands beat regular hands of the same rank.

In most poker variants these days, "cards talk," i. e. all you have to do is show the cards at the showdown, and the highest possible value is automatically presumed. This is not the case with Strongbadian Poker. Each player must pick out the full five-card hand for both hands, and once declared they're stuck with it. If two different five-card combinations might have yielded a better overall hand, well, you'll get more sympathy out of Bubs when begging for a refund.

Example: two hands, both containing straights. (For purposes of this example, neither can make a flush.)

PLAYER A has: Q J 10 9 8 A 4 3
PLAYER B has: 9 8 7 6 5 5 5 3

At the showdown they claim:

PLAYER A: Q J 10 9 8 and A Q J 4 3
PLAYER B: 9 8 7 6 5 and 5 5 5 9 3

Although player B has the lower straight, he ALSO has three of a kind, and thus beats player A, who only has the queen-high straight.

The complete hand ranks are:

POOPSMITH (two straight flushes)
STRAIGHT FOURS - Straight flush + four of a kind (ex. 10 10 10 10 9 8 7 6, the last five suited)
FLUSHHOUSE - Straight flush + full house (ex: Q Q J J J 10 9 8 with a straight flush)
WASH THE CHEAT - Straight flush + flush (whole hand same suit)
UNEVEN BARS - Straight flush + straight
ROYAL TRIPS - Straight flush + three of a kind (doesn't need to be a royal flush)
ROYAL DYNASTY - Straight flush + two pair
KING OF TOWN - Straight flush + one pair
Straight Flush
DOUBLE FOURS - Two sets of four of a kind
CAPTAIN SPACEFACE - "4... 3... 2..." Four of a kind plus full house (ex. 10 10 10 10 9 9 9 8; you'd take two of the 10s to put with the 9's for your backup hand)
QUADFLUSH - Four of a kind + flush
QUADSTRAIGHT - Four of a kind + straight
FOUR AND THREE - Four of a kind + three of a kind
HALF AND HALF - Four of a kind + two pair
Four of a kind
PENTHOUSE - Two full houses (ex. K K K Q Q 9 9 9)
FULL FLUSH - Full house + flush
FULL STRAIGHT - Full house + straight
DOUBLE TRIPS - Full house + three of a kind (ex. K K K Q Q Q 7 5)
APARTMENT HOUSE or HOUSE OF STRONG - Full house + two pair (ex. K K K Q Q J J 4)
Full house
READING DA NEWS - Two flushes
FLUSHSTRAIGHT - Flush + straight (but no straight flush, obviously)
TRIPLE FLUSH - Flush + three of a kind
DOUBLE FLUSH - Flush + two pair
NUMBER TWO - Flush + one pair
Flush
PARALLEL BARS - Two straights
TRIPLE STRAIGHT - Straight + three of a kind
COACH Z - Straight + two pair ("One... two... one... two...")
MARZIPAN - Straight + one pair
Straight
HOMESTAR RUNNER - three of a kind plus a pair (who else is stupid enough to BREAK UP A FULL HOUSE INTO DIFFERENT HANDS? Also applies to playing two separate three-of-a-kind hands. Hint: BOTH HANDS SHARE TWO CARDS. If you've got two sets of trips, you've got one FULL HOUSE...)
Three of a kind
POM POM - Two pair + two pair, all pairs different (four pairs)
HOMSAR - Two pair + two pair, one pair shared (three pairs)
Two pair
One pair
High card

Of course the fancy names for combination hands aren't necessary (and would take a LOT of memorizing!). So long as you remember the rankings of basic poker hands, you should be able to keep it straight.

What do you think?

Quick clarification: all eight cards MUST be used in the showdown to build the two hands. Only two cards can be shared between your two hands. You can't take three cards out of your four of a kind to build a second hand with a full house.

You can (and maybe should) play this with wild cards- for example, deuces wild would be called Strongbadia with the Cheat; making aces wild would be Cheat Commandos; and making one-eyed Jacks and the suicide King wild (Homestar, Homsar, and KoT) would be Free Country USA. In such variants, if the wild card is in the best hand (as it usually will be), whatever it's called as being in the first hand it MUST also be in the SECOND hand.

Wild cards bring Five of a Kind into play, though, which means more combination hands. Thanks to the above rule on wild cards, though, you wouldn't be able to have both five of a kind and a straight or flush.

In a wild card game with four wild cards, a player would theoretically be able to get four of a kind plus all four wild cards, and thus be able to build TWO five-of-a-kind hands. That's ten of a kind... and THAT's the hand that Strong Bad would name after himself.

Double Flush should be called Double-Deuce, that is all.

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Removed by admin for size restrictions

Hm, good point, but I'd take it one step farther in that case and call it Stinkoman.