No Peek
See also
Each player gets seven cards down. To start the game, the dealer turns over a card from a second deck (a card turned from the deck the cards were dealt from means everyone knows what card isn't available to them). The player to the dealer's left exposes cards until he shows a better card or cards than the exposed card from the second deck. This first player opens a round of betting - that's right, everyone except the first player must bet without seeing any part of his hand. The next player then turns over cards one by one until he has a better hand than the previous player. Player two opens another round of betting. The third player turns up cards one at a time until he has beaten the previous hand. Player three opens. And so on. This is a lazy dealer's dream game - once he deals out the first seven cards, he doesn't have to do another thing except spend lots of money waiting to turn over his own losing hand.
Say the card turned over from the second deck is a 9. The player on the dealer's left turns over a card until he beats the 9. Say he turns over a 9. He must now turn a second card so he has a better card than the 9. He turns over a King. That's better than a 9, and he opens. The next player now flips cards one by one until he has better cards than a King-9.
The No Peek game continues until each player has revealed all his cards or has dropped. The best five-card hand wins. Many players like to make cute geometric arrangements of the cards that lie face down in front of them. Others flip the cards out of sequence, picking them from the middle of the pile. Others hold the seven cards in their hand as if their cards were a tiny deck. This is all a matter of personal style, one of the few chances a player gets to express himself artistically at a poker table, other than in the way he stacks his chips.
No matter how a player reveals his cards, the one thing he can't do is look at them. A player may be forced to match the pot if he looks at his cards, and he is automatically expunged from the hand. In other, more liberal neighborhood games, a player who looks at his cards has indicated that he's out of the hand. The fun in No Peek is to watch a player fold too early look at his cards, and find he had a great hand.
Strategy.
If you are the first player, check. If a low card is revealed first, this game could go on forever. The next player will not have to reveal many cards to beat it. Being the dealer can be a boon or bane - a bane because you will have to bet in several rounds without having a clue as to what you have, a boon because you'll be in the best position to turn over all your cards once it does get to be your turn. This boon doesn't often overcome the bane, however.
If you get an early pair, it's a good idea to raise after someone beats your hand. There's a better chance of improving your hand with more cards left to reveal than the guy who just topped you. Many players like to bet or even raise without having turned a card if there are bad hands revealed behind them. It's silly, but it happens.
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