Celestial Poker / Sviten Special
Introduction
This Poker variant is a cross between
Five-card Draw and Omaha. Players are dealt five cards 1️⃣ each, and a there are five face
up shared cards on the table. After the first three shared cards (known 1️⃣ as the flop)
have been dealt, players can discard some of their hand cards and obtain replacements.
The pot is 1️⃣ split between the best five-card hand and the best Omaha hand. This mixture
of games guarantees action and is normally 1️⃣ played quite aggressively.
As reported by
Jonas Uebel, this game has become very popular in the Nordic countries under the name
1️⃣ Sviten Special, and is widely believed to have originated in 2004 in Anders Bengtsson's
legendary Sviten poker club in Stockholm, 1️⃣ as described for example on this festival
page. However I am told by Sebastién that an identical game was played 1️⃣ in French Canada
in the 1980's where it was known as Celestial Poker (or in French, Céleste). The
'festival page' 1️⃣ article also mentions that a similar game is played in the USA under
the rather clumsy name 'Drawmaha'. It may 1️⃣ well be that over the course of a quarter
century or more this same idea has arisen independently in several 1️⃣ widely separated
places.
Players, Cards and Stakes
A standard international 52-card deck is used. The
optimum number of players is 5 or 1️⃣ 6. It is possible for up to 9 to play, but then you
often have to recycle cards discarded by 1️⃣ the earlier players to be drawn by
others.
Players agree the size of the small and big blinds, and the betting 1️⃣ limits.
Sviten Special is preferably, and in its original format, played as pot limit.
Deal and
Betting
As in any form of 1️⃣ poker, the cards are shuffled and cut. The structure when it
comes to blinds, order of betting and the way 1️⃣ the communal cards are dealt are
identical to ordinary Texas Hold’em and Omaha.
The player to the dealer's left places
the 1️⃣ small blind and the player to the small blind's left places the big blind. The
dealer then deals five cards 1️⃣ to each player, and there is a betting round, beginning
with the player to the left of the big blind.
The 1️⃣ dealer then burns one card and deals
a three-card flop face up to the table. There is a second round 1️⃣ of betting in which the
player to the left of the dealer acts first.
After the second betting round, each
player 1️⃣ can discard any number of cards - from zero to five - and receives an equal
number of replacement cards 1️⃣ from the dealer, as in five card draw poker. If the deck
runs out at this point the muck (consisting 1️⃣ of earlier players' discards, the burn
card, and the cards of any players who folded in the first betting round) 1️⃣ is shuffled
to form a new deck from which to deal replacement cards to the later players.
The
dealer burns one 1️⃣ card and deals one card (the turn card) face up to the table. There is
a third round of betting 1️⃣ beginning with the player to the left of the dealer.
Finally
the dealer deals a fifth face up card (the river) 1️⃣ to the table, and there is a fourth
round of betting beginning with the player to the left of the 1️⃣ dealer.
The Showdown
If
any betting round results in all players but one folding, the last surviving player
immediately takes the pot 1️⃣ without showing any cards, and this ends the hand.
If more
than one player survives the final round of betting, all 1️⃣ surviving players show their
cards, and the pot is split between:
The best five-card poker hand (considering only
the five cards 1️⃣ held by the player)
The best Omaha hand, formed of exactly two of the
player's cards and exactly three of the 1️⃣ face up cards on the table.
Normal poker hand
ranking applies. It is of course possible for the same player to 1️⃣ win on both criteria,
and take the whole pot. However, it is common for the pot to be split.
Variations
A
popular 1️⃣ variation of Sviten Special allows an extra possibility when exchanging cards.
If you decide to exchange only one card, you 1️⃣ can ask the dealer to give you a
replacement card face up. You can either accept this card, which everyone 1️⃣ has seen, or
reject it and ask the dealer to deal you another card face down, which you must then
1️⃣ accept.
Sebastién describes three versions of the one-card exchange rule played in
Celestial Poker in Canada:
The player simply receives one replacement 1️⃣ card that is not
shown to the other players and has to accept it - i.e. the same as when 1️⃣ exchanging two
or more cards. This is rarely played. The player is dealt one card face up, which they
can 1️⃣ reject and take a face-down card in its place, the same as in the Sviten Special
variant above. The player 1️⃣ is dealt two cards face down, keeps one of them without
showing it, and discards the rejected card face up. 1️⃣ This third version is the most
popular.
Sviten Special is most popular to play as pot limit and in cash games.
1️⃣ However, there have been successful tournaments of Sviten Special and even some players
that like to play it as no 1️⃣ limit (but then the game tends to become quite
crazy).
Communist Pot is a Celestial Poker variation in which everyone at 1️⃣ the table has
to place an ante of 5× the big blind. There is no betting round after the first 1️⃣ 5 cards
are dealt: the dealer immediately deals the three-card flop. The game then continues in
the normal way.
There are 1️⃣ several Roll Your Own versions of Celestial Poker. The most
usual is for each player to reveal one of their 1️⃣ five cards when the turn card has been
dealt, before the third betting round, and a second when the river 1️⃣ card has been dealt,
before the final betting round.
