Friday, July 11, 2008

Another question

I don't mean to turn this into "Deep Thoughts with Jack Handy" here, but I'm playing a little razz online at the moment, and this just occurred to me.

When describing a normal poker hand in which one has failed to make even a pair, the usual shorthand is to call it "king-high," for example, if a king is one's highest card.

When describing a lowball hand, though, it's different. For example, if I've come up with 8-6-4-3-2, we call that "eight-low."

Seems to me that we should refer to it as "eight-high," since an 8 is the highest card.

So why don't we?

5 comments:

Julius_Goat said...

I think most of us call both of those hands "Just a sec, I can get rid of two cards so I have . . . um, wait. Is this stud?"

TheRazzDoctor said...

I'm not positive, but I believe it's just a shortened version of saying "I have an 8-6-5-3-2 for low" (perhaps originating in split pot games?) Anyway, it comes in handy because you can tell the hardened razz player from a newbie by who says "8 hi" and "8 low".

Anonymous said...

I'm just assuming it's because in Razz, 2-7, you are shooting for the lowest hand. It would look funny if it says Rakewell wins $$$ with High 8-6-4-3-2, when in fact it isn't the highest, it's the lowest.

Mr. Fabulous said...

We always say the two highest cards together, e.g. "eighty-five" beats "eighty-six".

Anonymous said...

I just say "an 8" or "an 8, 6". Unless its a split pot game, then I say 8 low or 8,6 low.