Video poker · the 8/5 pay card
Night Porter Poker
By two in the morning the lounge is quiet, and the night porter deals himself a hand at the desk. Five cards, one chance to change them and a pay card that rewards four of a kind handsomely. Pull up a stool.
How to play
Choose a stake of 5, 10, 25 or 50 Velvet Chips and press Deal. Five cards land face up. Tap any card you’d like to keep and it is marked HELD; tap it again to let it go. When you’re happy, press Draw, and every card you didn’t hold is replaced from the same deck. The finished hand is checked against the pay card, and anything due goes straight into your balance.
The pay card
The porter plays the old Jacks or Better rules with a richer ladder of fours. The table above the cards lists every paying hand, each figure a multiple of your stake: royal flush 250, straight flush 50, four aces 80, four 2s, 3s or 4s 40, four of any other rank from 5s to kings 25, full house 8, flush 5, straight 4, three of a kind 3, two pair 2, and a pair of jacks or better 1. When a hand pays, its line lights up in brass.
Card rooms call this an “8/5” pay card, after the full house and the flush. Those two pay a touch less than in plain Jacks or Better, and the difference goes to the fours: four aces on a 10-chip hand pay 800. A pair of tens or anything lower doesn’t pay at all. Straights can run from ace to five or from ten to ace, and a royal flush is simply that top straight in a single suit.
Rounds and decks
Every hand uses a freshly shuffled 52-card deck, so there’s no shoe to keep track of and nothing carries over from one hand to the next. The stake leaves your balance on the Deal, and the draw itself is free. Choosing what to hold is the only decision you make, and it’s yours alone — nothing is held for you. Velvet Chips are play credits with no cash value, and no hand can earn a prize.
From the Club’s story
Every club needs someone who is awake when everyone else isn’t. Ours has a night porter with a waistcoat, a ring of brass keys and a pocket watch he winds at two o’clock exactly. He taught half the members this game, and he still keeps the pay card pinned inside the door of the porter’s lodge, next to the list of taxi numbers.
Questions about Night Porter Poker
What is the lowest hand that pays?
A pair of jacks, queens, kings or aces — “jacks or better”. Smaller pairs are dealt just as often, but they don’t pay.
Why do four aces pay more than four kings?
That’s the character of this pay card: fours are split into three bands, and aces sit at the top at 80 times the stake, with 2s, 3s and 4s next at 40.
Is the deck shuffled every hand?
Yes. Each hand begins with a full 52-card deck in a fresh random order.
Other rooms in the house: