The Weirdest Poker Variants You Can Find Online

Poker rooms have started hosting games where players build hands backward, collect mismatched suits as currency, and treat pairs like poison. These variants exist because regular Texas Hold’em got boring for players who spent 10,000 hours memorizing pot odds and position charts. The strangest games flip basic poker logic so hard that professional players lose to amateurs who grasp the inverted rules faster.

When Low Cards Beat Royal Flushes

Razz makes aces worthless and turns 7-5-4-3-2 into a monster hand. According to AITechnolabs, players receive 7 cards throughout the game but only use 5 to create the lowest possible combination. Straights and flushes become irrelevant in this format. A player holding 8-7-6-5-4 beats someone with pocket aces and a king kicker. The game forces participants to think in reverse, where catching paint cards ruins your chances and pairing up tanks your equity.

Badugi takes the low-hand concept further by restricting players to 4 cards total. BetMGM’s blog notes that this South Korean variant considers A-2-3-4 unsuited the absolute best hand possible. Players draw up to 3 times per round trying to collect 4 different ranks in 4 different suits. Someone holding K-Q-J-10 of mixed suits loses to 5-4-3-2 rainbow. The game punishes traditional poker instincts at every decision point.

Card Counting Meets Poker Logic

Strip poker gets attention for obvious reasons, but card-counting variants present stranger mathematical puzzles. Games like Chinese Poker require players to build three separate hands simultaneously from 13 cards, while Badugi flips traditional hand rankings completely upside down. Some sites run HORSE tournaments that rotate through five different game types every eight hands, forcing players to switch strategies mid-session. Mixed game formats like 8-Game combine online poker staples such as Hold’em and Omaha with oddities like 2-7 Triple Draw and Razz in a single tournament structure.

The mathematics behind these variants breaks conventional poker wisdom. In Razz, a pair of aces becomes garbage while 5-4-3-2-A represents perfection. Badugi rewards players for collecting cards of different suits and ranks, making A-2-3-4 rainbow the nuts. Short Deck poker removes all cards below six from the deck, which means flushes beat full houses because they become harder to make with fewer suited cards available.

Double Everything

Double Flop Texas Hold’em runs 2 complete boards simultaneously. BetMGM mentions this split-pot format deals 2 separate sets of community cards, and players form hands using one or both boards combined with their hole cards. A player might hold pocket aces that dominate board one while getting crushed on board two. The pot splits between winners of each board, creating situations where someone wins half with bottom pair while their opponent scoops the other half with a straight.

PLO5 and PLO6 multiply complexity by dealing players 5 or 6 hole cards instead of Omaha’s standard 4. Creatiosoft reports that PLO6 creates “colossal pots” because the extra cards generate more drawing possibilities. Players still use exactly 2 hole cards with 3 community cards, but choosing which 2 from 6 options creates 15 different combinations. A PLO6 hand containing A-A-K-K-Q-J suited offers multiple nut flush draws, straight draws, and set possibilities on most flops.

Building Hands Face Up

Open Face Chinese Poker eliminates hidden information entirely. According to Creatiosoft, OFC has no community cards at all. Players receive 13 cards one at a time and must place them face up into 3 separate hands: a 3-card front hand, 5-card middle hand, and 5-card back hand. Once placed, cards cannot move between hands. The back hand must beat the middle, which must beat the front, or the player “fouls” and automatically loses.

The placement decisions become irreversible puzzles. A player might place an ace in their 3-card front hand early, then receive pocket aces later that they cannot use together. Someone might build toward a flush in their back hand, place the fifth suited card in the wrong position by accident, and watch their opponent complete a straight flush using cards they could have blocked.

Pineapple Problems

Crazy Pineapple starts like Hold’em, but deals everyone 3 hole cards. AITechnolabs explains that players must discard 1 card after seeing the flop, creating painful decisions about which cards to keep. Someone might start with A-A-K suited, see a king-high flop, and face the choice between keeping the overpair or the top two pair potential. The discard happens simultaneously, so players cannot gain information from opponents’ choices before making their own.

The variant creates wild swings because the extra starting card increases the chances of flopping strong hands. More players see flops with legitimate holdings, leading to larger pots and brutal bad beats when the turn and river arrive.

Format Chaos

HORSE tournaments cycle through Hold’em, Omaha Hi-Lo, Razz, Seven Card Stud, and Seven Card Stud Eight-or-Better. The game changes every orbit, forcing players to switch mental frameworks constantly. Someone might dominate the Hold’em rounds, hemorrhage chips during Razz, then rebuild their stack in Stud games. Mixed formats test complete poker knowledge rather than specialization in a single variant.

These weird variants exist on sites like PokerStars, GGPoker, and smaller platforms that cater to players seeking variety. Some run as cash games, others as tournaments, and a few appear only during special promotional periods. The player pools stay smaller than mainstream games, but the edges can be larger for those who study the unique strategies each variant demands.