Football

Contributed by Tim Beaulieu (timbo470@yahoo.com), who writes: "I am submitting a game my friends and I play on poker night. It is intended as a fun diversion from traditional poker, much the way we break up the serious hands with a round or two of "Screw Your Neighbor". We call it Football, I noticed an invented game called Football but this one is modelled after the American Football game."

Players get 4 stacks of 2 or 3 cards, dealt face down. These correspond to the four quarters of a football game. The winner will be the player with the highest score after all four quarters have been played.

Player 1 flips their first stack, or "quarter" (period of play). Betting may take place at that point, or can be conducted only after everyone has played "the first quarter" (this is up to how hard core the bettors are and how much they want the pot to swell). All bets are made poker style and placed in a pot which goes to the eventual winner of the game.

Points are given for the 2 (a safety), 3 (field goal), 6 (touchdown, no conversion), 7 and 8 (TD with 1 and 2 point conversion, respectively). (Each card gives the player the relevant number of points.) Variant can include using the Ace as a 1 point conversion but only can be scored in the same quarter as which the player gets a 6. (A six with two aces would be worth 7 points, not 8, as a touchdown can only be converted once.)

Play is the same manner as poker, high score wins the pot, and players are allowed to fold if the betting gets too much for them.

Another variant is to allow a player to "buy" a period of Overtime if they get a certain card, such as 10 or use the Ace if not being used as described above. If the player gets the designated card, they can buy an additional set of cards (2 or 3) for some ante (usually half the maximum allowed raise). The "overtime" bonus cards can be exposed by the player who bought them at any time, and this trigger an additional round of betting.