Was Poker Meant to Be Played with 4 Cards?

Why does a poker hand conventionally consist of 5 cards instead of 4?

4 is harmonious with a deck of cards containing 4 suits and 4 non-numerical cards.

Hitting four of a kind can be thrilling, but there is something aesthetically unpleasing about drawing 4 queens, then seeing an irrelevant 6 of clubs sandwiched in between them. QQQQ looks like more of a proper hand than QQ6QQ.

A royal flush ought to consist of three face cards plus an ace. There is nothing special about a 10. In fact, it's in an entirely separate class of pip cards. It may be the highest number card, but it's still just a number card - there's nothing 'royal' about it.

From a practical perspective, hitting a 5-card royal flush can be agonizingly elusive. It almost never comes into play during a live poker game (except maybe in Hollywood renditions). Hitting a royal on a single line video poker machine is far rarer than hitting a keno jackpot (even though overall returns on keno are worse), making vp too boring for many gamblers. Makers of vp machines have addressed this problem by adding multiple lines, multipliers, dream cards, and skewed pay tables that treat more common 4 of a kind hands like jackpots. Why don't any of them just switch to dealing 4 cards?

I'm sure someone here who is mathematically adept can calculate the odds of hitting a 4 card royal flush. There would be no 4 card full houses, but more straights and flushes. Live poker would presumably consist of a 2 card flop before the turn and river.

You have to think about the history to understand it. Originally, a deck of cards consisted of four suits with only five cards each.

A straight was called a wheel because the five numbers wrapped around like a wheel. If it was suited, they called it a steel wheel. I’m not really sure where the term ‘steel’ came from.

As far as royal flush is not appearing very often, you’re right. I had one lifetime when playing live poker.

It was this past February, playing at Wind Creek in Pennsylvania, during the Super Bowl, and thinking about my Super Bowl prop bets that I had with the Wizard. 😁

The pot wasn’t very big, but I qualified for the hourly high hand. I think it was $300. 👍

Quote: JackSpade

From a practical perspective, hitting a 5-card royal flush can be agonizingly elusive. It almost never comes into play during a live poker game (except maybe in Hollywood renditions).
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(truncated heavily)
I think you've nailed it by accident.
A five card straight flush, ace high, is darn hard to achieve, which is why it beats (almost) everything.
Replace any card with an offsuit 7, and you have garbage.

A 5 card hand gets you a lot of chances to make pairs, trips, fulls, and makes straights and flushes challenging (unlike in 3 card brag).

A bit late, but got this one sussed. The WoO site has details upon 4-card Poker /games/poker/
Scrolling way down 75-80%... is Four Card Stud. And its readily apparent that 2-pair, triples, straight, and flush all have about the same occurance.
Thus, Four Card Stud is a bit impractical for common play.
HOWEVER, add 1 Joker (fully wild) to the deck and the occurance problem clears up. Two Pair will rank ABOVE a Flush! (XXY+Jkr = XXX+Y)

NADA
1 PAIR
TRIPLE
STRAIGHT
FLUSH
2 PAIR
STRAIGHT-FLUSH
QUADS
ROYAL FLUSH
total of all hands is 53C4= 292825

cheers
NutmegPoker

Quote: JackSpade

Why does a poker hand conventionally consist of 5 cards instead of 4…link to original post

Just a guess, but could it be because a human hand has 5 digits?