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Poker home game: Shapeshifter

It’s been so long since I’ve played or talked about baseball poker games or variations, that you can imagine my excitement when I learned this great and strategic variation last weekend. It brings in the fundamentals of midnight baseball and throws in a little follow the queen inspired twist. They called it shapeshifter. Now, even with new rules, I don’t need much adjusting time to a baseball variation, but this one wiped me out. I just wasn’t getting the cards, and it admittedly did take a while to get the hang of when I should fold or take a chance.

Standard midnight baseball rules apply. In short, baseball is a 7-card stud game where 3′s and 9′s are wild. If the house chooses, you must match the pot or fold on a 3. If a 4 comes up, you can buy and extra hidden card for the amount of the ante. High game, winner takes all. Midnight baseball keeps all the cards hidden from everyone until it’s the player’s turn, and then cards are flipped up one by one in order until the hand value is higher than that of the previous hand. Betting in both cases is after each turn.

In shapeshifter, the rules start out the same as midnight baseball, but the wild cards can change during the course of the game. This is actually a bit more cruel than follow the queen, because in that game the queens remain wild no matter what. In this game, you could be sitting on a pair of nines that by the end of the hand could be worth nothing more than a pair of nines.

If a 7 comes up, the player has the option to change the wild card for a certain amount (just like buying a 4, but much more powerful). That player can only change one wild card at a time. From a second deck, the player draws a random card, which becomes the new wild card. So the tactic isn’t so much to help yourself as it is to knowingly hurt someone else. This can happen presumably 4 times during one hand if all 4 sevens come up.

The strategy here is two-fold. First, the aforementioned choice to kill someone’s wild card that’s already showing. The second, you must be careful when or if you fold, knowing the wild card could and likely will (depending on how many players there are) change by the end of the hand. Some if someone has a pair of three’s, anyone else who gets a seven and still has a chance is going to change that 3, and the leader quickly becomes the trailer.