Triple Draw History and Triple Draw Variants

Triple Draw is a form of lowball draw poker played in both Ace to Five and Deuce to Seven formats. As the name suggests, three draws are offered with a betting round between each. This is still a relatively new game having made its first appearance on the WSOP schedule in 2002 with a $1,500 A-5 Triple Draw event won by John Juanda. In 2003, A-5 Triple Draw returned to the WSOP schedule with Men the Master picking up his sixth career WSOP bracelet, which was his second of that year’s World Series.

Today Triple Draw is rarely played in the Ace to Five format, with Deuce to Seven being the version of choice. In 2004, 2-7 Triple Draw made its debut at the WSOP in an event won by Farzad Bonyadi. Triple Draw then took a two year hiatus from the WSOP schedule before returning in 2007 again in deuce to seven format where it has remained since.

The top online website for playing 2-7 Triple Draw online is PokerStars.com. As the world’s largest online poker site, they have plenty of traffic to support the game, and it has done quite well there since being added in November 2006. Currently, the only other poker sites offering Triple Draw are those powered by the Merge Poker Network; however, while Triple Draw tables are available at Merge sites, rarely if ever does a game run.

To play Triple Draw online get started at the PokerStars website.

History of Triple Draw

The origins of Triple Draw are heavily debated. During the 1990’s, this game was wide spread as only a part of the rotation of ultra high stakes mixed games. It was not until 2002 when Ultimate Bet, who no longer offers the game, first rolled it out online that it became available to the masses. According to David Sklansky, the now defunct Las Vegas casino founded by Bob Stupak Vegas World was spreading a game called Double-Draw in the 1980’s which was a precursor to Triple Draw.

From 1979 to 1984, a game called “Ten-Handed Triple-Draw Lowball” was spread at Amarillo Slim’s Super Bowl of Poker tournaments in Reno and Lake Tahoe. While certainly not the same game, as it used ten cards per hand, this is the first verifiable source of Triple Draw games being spread. However, Doc Jennings claims to have spread Triple Draw in its current five-card format during the late 1980’s in and around Fort Smith, AR, while Berry Johnston claims to have first played the Triple Draw in Oklahoma during the 1970s.

Doc Jennings most commonly gets the nod as the founder of Triple Draw. The one thing that is clear is that when Mississippi legalized casino gambling in 1991, Doc Jennings took Triple-Draw Lowball to the Hollywood Casino in Tunica, and the game began to spread from there.

Other Triple Draw Variants

In addition to Ace to Five Triple Draw and Deuce to Seven Triple Draw, there are several other Triple Draw variants that exist. The two most popular are listed below.

Badugi: A fast growing game offered at PokerStars.com. This triple draw allows up to eight players to sit at the same table (as opposed to six at traditional Triple Draw games), as it uses just four cards. The rankings are A-4 with a twist. In order for a card to play, it must be a different suit than the other cards. Therefore, the best possible hand is an A-2-3-4 each in a different suit. If a player has only three suits in his hand this is considered a three card hand which loses to any badugi (four cards of different suit), but beats other three card hands when its top card is lower than the opponents top card.

Baduci: Not to be confused with Badugi, Baduci is a split pot hybrid of Badugi and deuce-to-seven triple draw. Half the pot is given to the player with the best Badugi hand, and the other half is for the best deuce-to-seven triple draw hand. While this game is rare, it has recently started to appear in some Las Vegas casino mixed games.