Guts (card Game) - Rapid Pot Growth

Rapid Pot Growth

One of the characteristics of guts is that the pot grows quickly. As it can double or more each round, pots of 50 or 100 times the original ante are possible.

There are many variations. Sometimes only the single player with the worst hand (who stayed in) must add to the pot, but they must double the pot rather than match it. In an especially vicious variation, nobody wins the pot unless nobody else stays in. This can degenerate quickly, when one player must add a large amount to the pot, and decides to stay in until he wins it back. Thus the game continues indefinitely, with one player continually adding larger and larger amounts to the pot. The pot may grow so big that no player has enough cash to match it, leading to arguments about how to end the game. (This variation is not recommended when playing among friends. Often this variation is abandoned after the first really big pot leads to conflict.)

One solution to the exponentially growing pots is to cap them at 50x or 100x the ante. That is, if there are 5 players with an ante of $1, the pot started at $5. If there were 3 doublings, the pot is now at $40. Suppose the "cap the pot at $50" rule were in force. Then, if another doubling occurred, each loser would pay $40, but the pot would now be at $50 and the extra $30 would be set aside as the ante once there's a hand with a winner and no loser.