Crossword puzzle poker

I've written once before about the weird variations of poker that my brain sometimes concocts while I sleep. This one, I suppose, was inevitable, since after a full day of playing, reading about, writing about, and thinking about poker, I relax with a New York Times crossword puzzle for 30 minutes or so before I go to sleep most nights.

In crossword puzzle poker, you somehow draw to five cards in the hand, while a whole bunch more cards (I'm still a little fuzzy on the details) are carefully dealt out onto the enlarged grid of a crossword puzzle.

I found the game frustrating. In one hand, while playing against Michael Craig, I nabbed quad 3s in my hand, only to discover than they had been counterfeited by quad 4s on the board. Craig held a higher kicker and won the hand. A short time later, virtually the same thing happened again, though this time Layne Flack was my opponent. I drew quad 6s, but quad 8s showed up on the grid, and I lost yet again.

I suppose that with most of the deck spread out on the table for both players to use, that sort of thing is going to happen a lot. It might even be a more frustrating game than razz.

If anybody knows of a good strategy book for CPP, please let me know. I need to do some brushing up on it before I head back to sleep tonight.