Hottest Poker Variants

Here, you will be able to learn the rules and description of two alternative community poker games: Manila and Iron Cross. Browse through this section to discover more poker variants.

Manila

Manila is very popular in Australia. In fact, Manila is a Hold'em poker game, very similar to Omaha, but played with a stripped deck (a 32 card deck where all cards below 7 are removed). The peculiarity of a stripped deck is that straight is ranked above Full House and can not start from an Ace, meaning that A-7-8-9-10 is not a legal hand.

As the game starts, every player receives two hole cards and one community card is dealt in the center of the table. The first betting round is played. Four additional community cards are then dealt one by one with a betting round following each new card. The final betting round is followed by the showdown, where players combine the best possible five card poker hand. At this stage Manila involves an Omaha-like rule: Final hands must include both hole cards of the player and exactly three of the community cards.

As most stripped-deck games, Manila is very rarely played in High/Low split.

Iron Cross

Is another community poker quite popular as a home game and rarely found in casinos. In fact, Iron Cross is very similar to all other community poker games, but uses its own rule to define the wild card.

Iron Cross players receive five hole cards at the first deal. Community cards are then dealt one at a time with a betting round following each new community card.

In Iron Cross there are five community cards dealt in the form of a cross with one central card and four other cards around it. The central card is wild. There is no clear rule on whether cards that match the central card are wild too. Commonly they are wild, but in some games, only the central card itself is wild.

At the showdown, players form the best five card hand using any or all of the three community cards from whether vertical or horizontal arm of the cross and any number of hole cards. For example, if a player chooses the vertical arm, he can use any of its three cards, but can not use two cards that belong to horizontal arm.

Note that every Iron Cross player can use at least one wild card in every game, which increases the probability of high hands and lowers the relative strength of all hands.