Crazy Pineapple

Crazy Pineapple is another community card poker variant, which closely resembles Texas Holdem. The differences make it more interesting a a little bit more complicated to play.

Crazy Pineapple is played with blinds, just like Holdem, with a dealer, a SB and a BB. After the blinds are posted, each player gets 3 hole-cards (not 2 like in Holdem), then the first betting round commences.

Preflop betting is followed up by the flop, after which, each player has to discard one of his three hole-cards. It is compulsory to discard one of them, you can’t carry all three over to the next betting round.

From here on, the game plays just like Holdem. There’s a turn, followed by betting then there’s a river followed by the last betting round and the eventual showdown.

Players can make their final hands using either both their hole cards and three cards of the table, or only one of their pocket-cards and four cards off the table. Pineapple is played for high hands, with straights, flushes counting as well.

The strategic implications of that third pocket card are far-reaching and makes reading one’s hand much more difficult.

The betting structure that the game uses, is the following: for the preflop and post-flop betting rounds, betting is set at the lower limit, on all subsequent rounds it is set at the higher limit.

An interesting thing is, that there are only four bets allowed in any of the betting rounds/player. The raising and calling game cannot go on forever this way, as the 4^th bet is going to cap the action.