Billabong

Billabong

Billabong is a mixed version of Manila. Each player is dealt two down cards and one upward. Low upward starts the betting with a Bring-in if you are playing with one, otherwise high card starts the betting. Next, two community cards are dealt, followed by a second betting round, beginning with the player with the best exposed partial poker hand counting the community cards, as in Oxford stud. Then a third community card is dealt, followed by a third betting round. Finally a fourth community card is dealt, followed by a fourth betting round and showdown. Each player plays the best five-card hand he can make from the three in his hand plus the four on the board in any combination.

Shanghai is the same game with an extra hole card, but no more than two hole cards play. That is, the game begins with each player being dealt three down cards and one upward; each player must discard one of his hole cards at some point during the game as determined ahead of time. The most common variation is to discard immediately as in Pineapple; the second most common is to discard just before showdown as in Tahoe.

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.