Poch games

A four card set beats a three card set and so on. In the event of a tie, the player who has the trump suited card in their set wins. If no one has a set, the player with the highest card wins. Beginning with the player on the left side of the dealer, that player may either add chips to the Pinke or say pass. Passing is the same as folding. Players who fold still keep their cards.

Once chips are bet and added to the Pinke, the next player may either check, raise, or fold. Check by adding the same amount of chips to the Pinke. Raise by meeting the previous bet and adding more. Fold by saying pass. The Poker phase continues around the table until no one else wants to raise. If there are two or more players remaining in the Poker phase, they reveal their sets. The player with the highest ranked set wins the chips from the Pinke and the Poch bowl. If only one person remains because everyone else has folded, that player wins and does not have to reveal their hand.

This is the final phase of the game in which players are trying to get rid of their cards. Beginning with the player on the left side of the dealer, they choose one card from their hand and play it to the center of the table. Whoever has the next highest card in the same suit plays it. This continues until the Ace of that suit is played or no one else can add to the pile. Once the run of cards has been stopped, the last player to lay a card gets to begin a new run by choosing any card from their hand and playing it.

The first player to empty their hand wins. The remaining players pay the winner one chip for each card remaining in their hand. After the Shedding phase is complete, the cards are collected and deal passes to the next player. The banker must replenish the bowls with chips. Any bowl that was not emptied will start with more chips than the other ones.

For a shorter game, play one round for each player. For example, if there are four players, play four rounds. At the end of the final round, whoever has the most chips wins. Author Recent Posts. From 3 to 6 players can take part and a card pack is used, the cards ranking from high to low A-K-Q-J Each player has an equal supply of chips.

A board Pochbrett in the centre of the table is used to hold chips staked to the the various pools until they are won. There are many designs of Poch board - here is a modern example:. If a ready-made board is not to hand it is fairly easy to make your own. You need places for the nine pools: Ace, King, Queen, Jack, Ten, Marriage marked King-Queen on the board , Sequence marked on the board , Pocher marked with a Joker on the board and the centre pot unlabelled.

The first dealer is chosen at random and the turn to deal passes to the left after each hand. Before each deal, every player must put one chip into each of the nine pools. The dealer deals out the cards clockwise, one at a time, and places the last card face up on the table. Unless there are three players. Some of the players will have one more card than others: this does not matter.

The last card belongs to no one; the suit of this card is the "pay suit". The players who hold the Ace, King, Queen, Jack and Ten of the pay suit collect the chips from the relevant pools. If one player holds the King and Queen of the pay suit, that player takes the marriage pool.

If one player holds the Seven, Eight and Nine or the pay suit, that player takes the contents of the sequence pool. In many deals no one wins the Marriage or Sequence pools.

In this case the chips remain in the pool, and players will continue to add further chips before each deal even though they are not empty. If an Ace, King, Queen, Jack or Ten is turned up by the dealer as the pay suit card, then no one wins the pool corresponding to that card, and it is carried over to the next deal and added to in the same way.

In this stage, players bet on who has the best set of cards of the same rank. The betting process is known as Pochen. Any set of four of a kind beats any set of three of a kind, and any three of a kind beats any pair.

A set of higher ranking cards beats a set of the same number of lower ranking cards. If two players have pairs of the same rank, the pair containing the card of the pay suit is better. Note that the only combinations that are allowed here are pairs, triples and fours of a kind, and only the best combination of each player is compared.

If you have two pairs you only count the higher one. If you have a triple and a pair your hand just counts as a triple there is no such thing as a "full house" in this game. If all your cards are different ranks, you are not allowed to take part in the Pochen at all. Starting with the player to the left of the dealer and going round clockwise.

To bet you say "Ich poche 1" or "Ich poche 3" or whatever amount you want to bet, placing that number of chips towards the centre of the table. Subsequent players can either match your bet, raise the bet by staking a larger number of chips, or drop out fold.

The betting continues around the table for as many circuits as necessary until the amounts bet by the players who have stayed in are equal. When you drop out of the betting you sacrifice any chips you may already have bet on an earlier round. When the bets are equal, each of the players who has stayed in shows the combination pair, triple or quartet on which they were betting, and the owner of the best combination takes all the chips that were bet and the contents of the Pochen pool.

If everyone passes, the contents of the Pochen pool stay there and are added to before the next deal. If only one player bets, or if all players but one drop out during the betting, then the only bettor naturally takes the Pochen pool and all the stakes, having shown a pair or better to prove entitlement to win them. I have not seen explicit rules about betting limits or what happens when players do not have enough chips to equal another player's bet. Since Poch is nowadays usually played as a family game with no money at stake, this probably does not matter much.

If it were played for money, it would be sensible to have a system similar to Poker, where if you do not have enough chips to equal the last bet you can stake all your remaining chips. At the end of the betting you will have a showdown against everyone who has bet at least as much as you, but if you win you only get from each of them an amount equal to your stake; you would also get the contents of the Pochen pool. The players who bet more will have a showdown against each other and the best of their hands will win the remaining parts of their stakes.

The winner of the Pochen or the player to dealer's left if everyone passed begins the play and can play any card from their hand face up in the centre on top of the centre pot on the board. Whoever holds the next higher card of the same suit plays it, and this continues until a point is reached where no one has the next card because it has already been played or because it was the face up pay suit card.

The person who played the last and highest card of the sequence begins again, playing any card, and again the cards are played in ascending sequence in suit. This continues until a player runs out of cards. The player who first plays their last card is the winner of the third stage.

This player collects the contents of the centre pot, and in addition is paid by each of the other players one chip for each card they still have in their hands. The game usually continues until someone runs out of chips. Often this will happen when someone does not have the necessary 9 chips to place on the board when the cards are dealt. The remaining players then count their chips and the winner is the player with most chips.