Seven Card Pass & Draft

An original Game Rules Guru poker game by Steve Wannall. This is a form of “closed hand” poker (like 5-card draw), but is unique in that every player has the opportunity to see every single card in play. The challenge is in figuring out which player has ended up with which cards.

Number of players

3 – 7

Deck

Standard deck of 52 playing cards, jokers removed.

Deal

Each player is dealt 7 cards face-down.

Play

After looking at all of their cards, each player chooses or “drafts” one of the 7 cards to keep and places it face-down on the table in front of them. Each player then passes the remaining 6 cards face-down to the player on their left. Cards passed from another player are kept separate from cards that are drafted, but players may look at the cards they have drafted at any time. Each player should now have 6 cards in their hand, and 1 card face-down in front of them. Players now draft a second card from the 6 in their hand and add it to the first drafted card. The remaining 5 cards in their hand are now passed to the left as well. This continues until every player has drafted 7 cards (they will, obviously have no choice on the last drafted card). Once the draft is finished, players select the best 5 card poker hand that can be made from the 7 cards they drafted, and there is a round of betting. When the betting has resolved, the player holding the highest poker hand (or last player still in the pot after all others have folded), wins the pot.

Object

As with all poker games, the only goal is to win the money.