[Editor’s Note: This answer is graciously supplied by Dan Lubin, author of our new book Essentials of Casino Game Design, one of the world’s foremost authorities on new table games.]
The game that started the flush-focused trend was High Card Flush by Mike Pertgen, a crap dealer at the Rio, who came up with the variable-length flush as a new casino-game mechanism in 2011; that game, common to see at casinos, is distributed by Galaxy Gaming.
The one you saw might also be one of two later and similar flush-based games: Chase The Flush (by AGS) or Flushes Gone Wild (by Shuffle Master), although High Card Flush remains the originator and granddaddy of the flush-game concept.
The way these games work is as follows. You’re dealt (or to draw to) a hand that has a longer or higher flush than the dealer’s: A five-card flush beats a dealer’s four-card flush, and so on. When two flushes of the same length face off, the win is given to the one with higher cards. Copied hands push (tie). All other poker elements, such as pairs, straights, and full houses, etc. are ignored in these flush games. The following rundown describes how these games are played and their stats.
For High Card Flush, a player makes an Ante bet and is dealt 7 cards. If he wishes to play his hand, he makes a Raise bet, keeping his longest and highest flush, and discards the cards of the other suits. Player may raise only the Ante unit bet size, unless he has a 5-card flush or better.
High Card Flush is similar to Three Card Poker because of its ante and play (raise) bet structure. The strategy is to play (raise) any hand that has a three-card flush with a jack or higher (or longer flush), else fold. A playable hand occurs 68% of the time, a folding hand 32% of the time, and the house edge is 2.6% with an element of risk of 1.58%.
For playing Shuffle Master’s Flushes Gone Wild, the player bets on the Ante and Blind and receives 5 cards. He must either play the hand by making a Play bet of twice his Ante bet, or fold. After the players have bet or folded, two community cards are shown, which will complete the 7-card hands for the remaining players. Deuces are wild and can be added to any position’s longest flush to form the best hand. Strategy is to play any starting hand has a three-card flush, or a two-card flush with K-8 high or better. If you beat the dealer by two or more cards in flush length, you get an additional bonus on the Blind bet. A playable hand occurs 75%, a fold-worthy hand 25%, with a house edge of 7.46% and an element of risk of 2.13%.
For playing AGS’s Chase The Flush, each player makes an Ante and an X-Tra Bonus bet, receives three cards, and may check or Raise three times on the "All In" (raise) bet. Then two flop cards are shown and the players who checked may now raise 2x the Ante or check again. Then the last two community cards are shown, where the player may call 1x the Ante or fold the hand. Bonuses are paid on the X-Tra bet for strong flush hands of four or more cards.
This game, obviously, has the most involved strategy, so it’s the beefiest game of the lot, but also the trickiest. Basic strategy is to raise 3x on the starting three cards if you have three suited cards or two suited cards of Q-9 or better; if you checked, then raise 2x on the flop with three suited cards holding a jack or better or if you hold in your hand two of the three suited cards. If you checked again, then call 1x on the river with any three-card suit, else fold the hand. Odds of raising hands are 24% for a 3x raise hand, 25% for a 2x raise hand, and 35% for a 1x call-worthy hand, folding 16% of the time. House edge is 2.4% and element of risk is 1.2% with optimal play.
As I mentioned, High Card Flush is the most common of these three flush-based games; it’s not only the original, but it’s the easiest to play.
