Who Cuts The Cards At A Home Poker Game? Plus Other Riddles

When there’s a lively debate over who should cut the cards at a home game due to superstition or fear of foul play, it all counts as a poker riddle. Fascinatingly, because of the countless options and scenarios that can arise in this complex card game, there are entire books and websites dedicated to poker riddles.

In this article, we’re going to be expanding your horizons and giving you food for thought by enlightening you with a few tall tales of varying difficulty. From here, you’ll have some great things to talk about during an online poker match, and a worldly knowledge that might secure you the jackpot.

The first riddle we have seems simple, as all riddles do. So: if three plus four is seven, and eight plus two is 10, what is nine plus three? Our instinct tells us to say 12, but in actuality, the answer is Queen; this is because Jack succeeds 10, and Queen succeeds Jack. It just shows you how even the rules of basic mathematics can be bent thanks to good old poker!

Now you’ve been eased in with one that isn’t too taxing, try to get your head around this. You are lucky enough to be on holiday in Las Vegas, when you are one of 8,000 contestants taking part in an advanced tournament that’s about to take place. All of the players are split into four groups over four days, and you decide to play on the fourth day so you can analyse the outcome of the prior three. You are shocked and surprised to learn that out of the 2,000 people to play on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, only one survived from each heat – leaving three people in the final on Thursday. The riddle is this: at this point, what odds do you have to walk away with the title?

Technically, this is a mathematical problem for you to solve, but the fact to stress is that Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday’s heats are completely unrelated to each other if the competition is held fairly. As you wait for Thursday to get underway, you have a 7,999 to one chance of being successful and grabbing the jackpot.

Let’s say that you are the lucky person to beat everyone else on Thursday, meaning that you face the other three winners from the previous days of play. Not only do you have to overcome the one in 2,000 chance of winning Thursday, but you then have to achieve the one in four chance of beating the other finalists on Friday. When you multiply the odds together, this is one in 7,999 – the exact same odds as you faced when you entered the tournament.

There are other complex riddles that are concerned with the cards that you could be dealt during a game. Another word problem relates to Texas Hold ’Em, and the number of cards that you could have in any game that will allow you to beat your opponents. In the industry, these are known as outs. Forum members challenge each other and try to work out the exact answer fiendishly, and it is surprising to learn that there can be as many as 25 cards up for grabs that could transform your fortunes if the stakes were high.

You could try and create your own, but they can be so complex and beguiling that it can leave your head sore. Now that you’ve broadened your horizons, why not get back into the cards with a game of online poker on your favourite website? Maybe you’ll see a riddle unfold before your very eyes!