Five-Card Draw
The simplest and oldest form of poker: five private cards, one chance to trade in cards you don't want, and a single showdown.
Rules
Five-Card Draw is dealt entirely face down with no shared cards. Each player antes (or posts blinds, depending on house preference), then receives five cards face down.
Betting round one: Starting to the left of the dealer (or the big blind, if blinds are used), players bet, check, call, raise, or fold based solely on their five original cards.
The draw: Players remaining in the hand may discard any number of their cards (commonly zero to four, sometimes with a house rule permitting a five-card draw only if the player shows an ace) and receive that many new cards face down from the deck. Players who decline to draw any cards are said to "stand pat," which is itself a tell that often signals a strong made hand.
Betting round two: A final round of betting follows the draw, starting with the first active player to the dealer's left.
Showdown: Remaining players reveal their five-card hands; the best standard poker hand wins the pot.
Strategy notes: Because opponents' number of cards drawn is public information, drawing zero, one, or several cards conveys strong information about hand strength, and skilled players use draw counts to bluff as much as raw betting.
Common house rules
Jackpots / progressive openers
In 'Jacks or Better' variants, a player must hold at least a pair of jacks to legally open the betting; if no one can open, antes carry over and the requirement escalates to queens, then kings.
Joker as bug
Many home games add a joker that acts as a bug — a wild card that can only complete straights, flushes, or count as an ace (not a fully wild card for pairs/trips).
Buy an extra card
Some tables let a player who stands pat 'buy' a bonus card face down for an extra ante, without discarding, purely as a friendly variance twist.
Related games
Based on shared category, origin, and rules that reference each other.
California Lowball
The classic single-draw lowball game: five cards, one draw, lowest hand wins using Ace-to-Five ranking where straights and flushes don't count.
Learn the rules →Double Draw
A Five-Card Draw variant with two separate draw rounds instead of one, giving players a second chance to improve before the final showdown.
Learn the rules →Gardena Jackpot
Also called Jacks to Open — a Five-Card Draw variant popularized in the historic Gardena, California poker clubs, where no one may open the betting without a pair of jacks or better.
Learn the rules →Jacks Back
A Five-Card Draw variant that plays as a normal high game when someone can open with jacks or better — but automatically converts to Ace-to-Five lowball if nobody qualifies.
Learn the rules →