Month: October 2017

Pineapple – unavailable at most online poker sites but perfect for home games

Pineapple – unavailable at most online poker sites but perfect for home games

Have you heard of Pineapple Poker yet? It is definitely one of the more fun poker holdem variations. Whilst many online casinos tend to stick with variants like Omaha and Texas Hold’em poker, we want to become advocates for the juicier, fruitier variant.

A brief overview of Pineapple poker rules

The rules of Pineapple poker can be explained in three steps:

  • 1. Every player receives three hole cards from the dealer.
  • 2. A round of betting follows – this is the pre-flop round.
  • 3. Each player now discards one of the hole cards that they have been dealt.
  • 4. The flop is dealt out and the game proceeds in the same way as a game of Texas Hold’em poker.

Essentially, then, a standard game of Pineapple Poker is like a game of Texas Hold’em but with a juicy twist at the beginning. We have plenty of articles on the rules of Texas Hold’em poker if you want to refresh your memory!

A quick guide to terminology

Were you unsure of the meanings of any of the words in the description above? Don’t worry! Here is a handy glossary to get you up to speed:

  • Hole cards: personal cards that each player is dealt out individually. These cards are dealt face down and are kept hidden from the other players. A good poker player will use card counting techniques (check out our articles on this if you are interested) to try and work out what their fellow players’ hole cards are.
  • Pre-flop: the round before the flop.
  • The flop: the round in which the dealer deals out three cards face up on the table. These cards are called the ‘community cards’ and players combine the community cards with their hole cards to try and create a winning hand.

Variants of variants: will it ever end?

Pineapple poker is a variant of Texas Hold’em poker, as we have already mentioned. But the endless variation doesn’t stop there. There are also variants of Pineapple poker itself. Let’s take a look at just one of those variants to give you a taster: Crazy Pineapple poker.

Try your hand at Crazy Pineapple poker

The key difference between Crazy Pineapple poker and Pineapple poker rules is the timing of when you discard one of your hole cards. As we have seen, in Pineapple poker, you will discard it before the flop is dealt. In Crazy Pineapple, you do so after the flop. Crazy, right?

Want to explore other variations of Pineapple poker rules?

There are lots of other options for you. If you liked Crazy Pineapple poker, and if you like words that rhyme, you could always progress on to playing Lazy Pineapple poker for example. Why is it called Lazy Pineapple? Quite simply because in this variant, players do not discard their hole card until the very last stage of the game. How lazy of them!

The importance of a good starting hand

More than perhaps any other poker variant, Pineapple poker is a game where having a good starting hand really matters. The best starting hand that you can get in Pineapple poker is…

A card from a Royal Suit plus a pair of aces

If you find yourself with this starting hand, your chances of winning the game are especially favourable.

Traditionally a game to be played at home

For whatever reason, Pineapple and its variants has usually been thought of as a private variation of poker – i.e. a game to be played with friends at home, perhaps for matchsticks rather than cold, hard, cash. Nevertheless, many online casinos are now offering Pineapple poker both in a computer generated form and as part of their portfolio of live dealer games. If not, you can always call up a few friends and try playing this game at home. Both classic Pineapple poker and Crazy Pineapple are lots of fun.