Gambling Guide

A stripped deck is a set of playing cards from which cards have been removed. This kind of deck is used in certain poker variants, and the cards that are removed are usually low-ranking ones. For example, the Australian game of Manila uses a 32-card deck in which all cards below the rank of 7 are removed, and Mexican stud is played with the 8s, 9s, and 10s removed from the deck (and a joker added). This may require adjusting hand values: in both of these games, a flush ranks above a full house, because having fewer cards of each suit available makes flushes rarer.

A hand such as 6-7-J-Q-K plays as a straight in Mexican stud, skipping over the removed ranks. Some places may allow a hand such as 10-9-8-7-A to play as a straight (by analogy to a wheel) in the 32-card game, the A playing low and skipping over the removed ranks (although this is not the case in Manila). Finally, the relative frequency of straights versus three of a kind is also sensitive the deck composition (and to the number of cards dealt), so some places may play that trips beat a straight, but the difference is small enough that this complication isn't necessary for most games.

Five-card stud is often played with a stripped deck as well, usually the same 32-card deck as Manila (with all cards of rank 2 through 6 removed). In lively home games it might work better to only strip three ranks (2s through 4s) with seven or eight players; with only two or three players 7s and 8s could be stripped as well, leaving the same 24-card deck used in euchre. In any of these cases, a flush should rank above a full house (in the 24-card case it's actually more rare than four of a kind, but is rarely played that way). It should be noted that stripped deck five-card stud is a game particularly well-suited to cheating by collusion, because it is easy for partners to signal a single hole card and the relative value of knowing the location of a single card is higher than with a full deck.