Jail Poker Stories

The game of poker has been thrust into the everyday lifestyle of serious poker players everywhere, especially with the online poker boom in recent years. Now poker can be played from home, work or anywhere your laptop can go, not to mention live card clubs and self-run home games. Poker is even played in prison, which was no news to me. However, the way that poker is played in prison and jail houses is quite interesting.

As the say in show business, "the show must go on," and this runs true for poker lovers even during the dark time of having to serve time for one reason or another. The game must go on for a poker player, and what better way to pass the time (when time is all you have), than to play a few rounds and maybe make some money.

As simple as it may sound, just get a deck of cards and a few willing players, shuffle up and deal. But it is not so simple in prison. First you have the currency issue. There is no cash floating around the cell block, so what do you play for? I have learned that inmates often play for stamps or stamped envelopes. That is their currency - a book of stamps can be traded for tobacco, food or even to rent a color TV from another inmate. Stamps in prison are equal to money.

Jail House Rules - The Pocket Pair Rule

You may think that regulation rules always apply when playing poker. This is not necessarily true when playing a poker game in prison. There can be quite a few house rules. Limits are more commonly set at 1 and 2. 1 stamp small bet & 2 stamps big bet, and the big bet is sometimes only allowed on the river. I have even heard that in some cases, raising is not allowed. A cap of 1 raise on the river may be set. One rule that I have been told about makes no sense at all, yet they play by it. The game is Hold Em. Say you are holding AK and your opponent is holding 88, the flop, turn and river make the board JJQQ7. Your ace high with the 2 pair on board wins the pot in a regulation game. Not in the slammer! There is a pocket pair rule that if there are 2 pair on the board and you are holding a pocket pair, you automatically win the pot by having that pocket pair, even if it is a lower pair than what the board is showing.

Other Card Games in Prison

A very popular game played in prison is called "Casino" - a type of "fishing" card game. 2-7 players at a time may play this game. In this game they deal the whole deck out, therefore 1 deck is considered to be a round. An ante or buy in is placed by each player at the start of each round. At the end of a round, a point tally reveals the winner. Casino is not your run-of-the-mill poker game, but is played quite often by inmates everywhere.

An inmate that sets up the game even takes a rake (percentage of every pot for running the game). Rake for running a daily game can be anywhere from $3.00- $10.00 a day and sometimes more. That may not sound like very much to you and me, but when you are able to make $70.00 a week while in prison, that pays for all your extra needs (stamps, envelopes, extra food, phone cards, etc.).

Remember The Golden Rule !

Prison poker works just like the way off-the-wall home games work. Something is set as currency, and rules are made and stuck to. No cheating is a rule that good poker players always honor. Unlike home games or any other kind of poker played, if you get caught cheating, you are looked down upon. You CANNOT cheat at poker in prison. If you get caught, you will get a lot more than just looked down upon by your peers. Hearing about prison poker was just another example of how loved the game is. Poker will always be played by us, the die hard fans of the game, no matter where we are.

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