Bouillotte

Bouillotte

Bouillotte, a vying 18th century French gambling card game of the Revolution, based on Brelan, very popular during the 19th century in France and again in America for some years from 1830. Bouillotte is regarded as one of the games that influenced the open-card stud variation in poker.

A piquet pack is used, from which, in case five play, the sevens are removed. When four the knaves, and when three the queens are omitted. The ace is the highest card in play and in cutting. Counters or chips, as in poker, are used. Before the deal each player antes one counter to the pot, after which each, the age passing, may raise the pot; those not seeing the raise being obliged to drop out.

Three cards are dealt to each player, and a thirteenth, called the retourné, when four play, turned up. Each player must then bet, call, raise or drop out. When a call is made the hands are shown and the best hand wins. The hands rank as follows:

Simple Brélan, three of a kind, ace being high.

Brélan Carré, four of a kind, one being the retourné.

Brélan Favori, three of a kind, one being the retourné.

If more than one player has a brélan, the best is one that matches the rank of the turn up a brélan carré, or squared-up brelan. If none matches, that of highest rank wins. Any player with a brelan receives a side-payment of one chip, two if it is a carré, from each opponent.

If no player holds a brélan, the hand holding the greatest number of pips wins. All hands are turned face up, including those of players who dropped. The face values of all these cards are totalled for each suit, ace counting 11, court cards 10 and numerals their face value. The best suit is the one with the highest visible total, and the player holding the highest card of it wins the pot, provided that he has not previously dropped. If he has, the winner is the player counting the greatest face value of cards in any other suit.

Duplicate Poker

 

Duplicate poker is a variant of the popular card game poker. Duplicate poker is based on the principles of Duplicate Bridge but also involves some of the rules used for playing pot limit and no limit Texas hold'em.

Duplicate poker is a skill-based game in which there are two or more tables consisting of the same number of players. Each table is dealt with an identically shuffled deck of cards. Every player holds the same hand as the person seated in identical seats at other tables.

All players begin each hand with the ability to bet the same number of playing chips, regardless of prior performance in the previous rounds.

The object of Duplicate poker is to win more chips than your opponents sitting in corresponding seats at other tables. Ultimately, the winner is decided based on the total number of chips accumulated up until the end of the game, as compared with those held by all players in the same seats at the other tables. Conceivably, even a player who loses chips overall can win at the game if that player loses fewer chips than his opponents.

Duplicatepoker.com, the first poker room to use the format, closed down on October 5th 2008, citing the global financial crisis as the reason for the removal of services. It had previously been popular due to the fact that as a skill-based game it was legal in the U.S. While the game is more conducive to an automated online format because of pre-set decks and the need to record accurate scoring, Duplicate poker has also been played in a live format. The first-ever Duplicate poker tournament was held in April 2007 at the Cherokee Casino in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Card Game Rules

Any specific card game imposes restrictions on the number of players. The most significant dividing lines run between one-player games and two-player games, and between two-player games and multi-player games. Card games for one player are known as solitaire or patience card games.  Generally speaking, they are in many ways special and atypical, although some of them have given rise to two- or multi-player games such as Spite and Malice.

In card games for two players, usually not all cards are distributed to the players, as they would otherwise have perfect information about the game state. Two-player games have always been immensely popular and include some of the most significant card games such as piquet, bezique, sixty-six, klaberjass, gin rummy and cribbage. Many multi-player games started as two-player games that were adapted to a greater number of players. For such adaptations a number of non-obvious choices must be made beginning with the choice of a game orientation.

One way of extending a two-player game to more players is by building two teams of equal size. A common case is four players in two fixed partnerships, sitting crosswise as in whist and contract bridge. Partners sit opposite to each other and cannot see each other's hands. If communication between the partners is allowed at all, then it is usually restricted to a specific list of permitted signs and signals. 17th century French partnership games such as triomphe were special in that partners sat next to each other and were allowed to communicate freely so long as they did not exchange cards or played out of order.

Another way of extending a two-player game to more players is as a cut-throat game, in which all players fight on their own, and win or lose alone. Most cut-throat card games are round games, i.e. they can be played by any number of players starting from two or three, so long as there are enough cards for all.

For some of the most interesting games such as ombre, tarot and skat card game, the associations between players change from hand to hand. Ultimately players all play on their own, but for each hand, some game mechanism divides the players into two teams. Most typically these are solo games, i.e. games in which one player becomes the soloist and has to achieve some objective against the others, who form a team and win or lose all their points jointly. But in games for more than three players, there may also be a mechanism that selects two players who then have to play against the others.