Shanghai Poker is a community poker game played with a standard deck of cards plus a joker. The joker may substitute for any card.
How To Play Shanghai Texas Holdem Poker
In the game of Shanghai a player can make three types of bets: the Double Hand bet (which is mandatory), Five Card Bonus side bet (optional) and/or the Taxpayer’s Fortune bet (which is also optional).
The dealer and players each receive five cards face down.
All players use their five cards by dividing them into a two-card front-hand and a three-card back-hand. The two card hand should not outrank the five card hand ever. Below you will see the hand rankings chart and a brief explanation:
- Straight Flush
- Three of a kind
- Straight
- Flush
- One Pair
- High Card
The two card hands are played first and the highest hand possible here is a pair. If two hands have the same value pair then the dealer wins the pot for the “copy”. Otherwise the player with the highest pair or high card wins.
In order to win, the player has to win both poker hands. When this happens it is paid out like this:
(i) if the dealer has a king high hand the winner gets the entire sum of money.
(ii) if the dealer has a lesser hand the payment is only half.
The optional five-card bonus bet is the kicker; it pays entire money on jacks or better and up to 400 to 1 for a hand of five aces. Of course this is a hard hand to get since it requires that you have all the aces as well as the wild card.
Rules of Shanghai Texas Holdem Poker
The normal game play is almost self explanatory as far as rules are concerned. The bets are made before the cards are dealt and the highest hand you can get with two cards is a pair. The side bets are profitable but harder to come by. This is a fast paced and exciting variant of the Texas Holdem Poker.
