Poker Pineapple

Pineapple Poker

Pineapple is played with a standard 52-card deck. All players receive three cards dealt face down (hole cards) as their personal hand and then must immediately discard one of the three cards. The first round of betting occurs. Three cards are turned face up in the middle of the board simultaneously (flop). The second round of betting occurs. At this time players must discard one of their hole cards. One more card is dealt face up on the board (turn). A third round of betting occurs. The last card is dealt face up on the board (river card). The fourth round of betting occurs. Board cards are community cards for all players to use. A player may use any combination of five cards among the board cards and hole cards to form a poker hand. A player may choose to use all the board cards (playing the board) and no hole cards to form a poker hand. The highest five card poker hand wins the pot. In the event of a tie, the pot is split equally among the tied winning hands.

Kill Game

In the game of poker, a kill game is a game played using a variation of fixed limit betting rules. A kill game provides for the play of kill hands, which involve an extra blind bet and increased betting limits. Kill games are infrequent but not uncommon in home poker games; many casinos offering poker will introduce the kill to a table on request or during certain scheduled times. Kills are most often used in community card poker variants like Texas hold 'em, which normally use blinds as the primary forced bet, and this article assumes such a game is being played, but the concept can be made to work with almost any poker variant with only minor changes to suit the betting protocol of the game.

Kill games serve to mitigate wins by dumb luck or flukes. They also serve to mitigate bad beats, which are wins by a player who made questionable choices from an odds standpoint. While such players are often inexperienced, they may win a substantial hand despite making poor decisions such as raising or calling on a drawing hand with very low probability to make the hand, which can be frustrating to more experienced players. Such poor decisions are likely to eventually or gradually result in a large loss; kill hands make this loss happen sooner rather than later if the player persists in loose aggressive play. Thus, kill hands encourage a more disciplined, tighter betting style less likely to call/raise and more likely to fold. However, as the kill hands are only played infrequently, the general betting style of the table is looser than if the kill stakes were normal limits.

Kill games among a table of more experienced players also create a heightened thrill of risk; a player is on a winning streak, or a big pot has just been won, and the next pot is likely to be bigger. Kill games can in such cases encourage looser play as well.