Poker World Series Online

The Pinatubo Hold'em

This particular poker variant is most probably named after the Philippine volcano that erupted in 1991. And this poker variant is sought by many poker players because they found the Manila Hold'em difficult to play using the no limit and pot limit betting structures.

The Pinatubo Hold'em is similar to the Manila Hold'em at the beginning. The Pinatubo Hold'em, like the Manila Hold'em, begins when each poker player is dealt with two personal (also called "hole") cards and one community card is revealed. This is quickly followed by the first betting round. After this point, the Pinatubo Hold'em deviates slightly from the Manila Hold'em.

In the Manila Hold'em, a second community card is placed and this is followed by a second betting round. But in Pinatubo Hold'em, two community cards are placed first before the second betting round commences. Then, after the second betting round, the remaining steps in Pinatubo Hold'em are similar again to the Manila Hold'em.

That is, the fourth community card is revealed followed by a third betting round. Then, a fifth community card is placed and the fourth betting round is conducted. After this last betting round, a showdown follows immediately. At the showdown, each poker player must form a hand composed of exactly two personal cards and three community cards from the board.

As with Manila Hold'em, the Pinatubo Hold'em is played with a stripped deck. That is, some cards are removed from the deck. These cards are those which are ranked lower than 7. When these cards are removed from the deck, the ranking of hands is affected. That is, the flush becomes a better hand than the full house. This is due to statistics which compute the probability of forming hands. And the computation shows that flushes are rarer than full houses.

The Pinatubo Hold'em can also be played in a slightly different way. That is, instead of receiving two personal cards, the poker players are dealt with three hole cards. These hole cards are kept until the showdown. But the each poker player must use only two of the personal cards together with three community cards. A poker player cannot use all three of his personal cards nor only one of the hole cards.

With a total of four betting rounds, the Pinatubo Hold'em can be played using the pot limit or no limit betting structures, just like the Texas Hold'em variants. But because the deck is stripped, the Pinatubo Hold'em cannot be played high-low split.