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Countdown Holdem

From Countdown

Countdown Holdem (no apostrophe) is a hybrid of Countdown and Texas Hold'em invented by Gary Male for use in the COLIN 2008 event as an exhibition game.

Rules

Each player starts with 100 chips. Before the hand is dealt, each player pays an ante, starting at 1 chip, and rising by 1 chip every three hands. Each player then receives three face-down cards, CVC. If they want to proceed with the hand, they have to pay another ante to the pot. Players have about 10 seconds to do this, and may be done in any order, although players may go a couple of seconds over. The first three cards are dealt VCV. Again, players have 10 seconds to pay an ante to proceed to the turn. From this turn onwards, players may bet up to the limit of the pot; players still in the pot at this stage will have paid three antes. Players have a maximum of 20 seconds to bet, check, declare etc from this stage onwards. The turn is dealt as a C, and the river is dealt as CV, putting VCVCCV as the community cards. Any players still remaining in the hand will now declare their words, the longest valid word or words taking the pot. In the event that all players declare invalid words, the chips in the pot are permanently removed from play.

The game ends when 1 player has all the chips, when an allocated time or hand limit is reached, a mass brawl breaks out, or the nurse has to be called for any particular reason.

Countdown Holdem follows the Goatdown mass noun model, in that all mass nouns can be pluralised, unless it is patently ridiculous to do so.