I ran some games of General Knowledge Poker recently and several people asked me where they could find the rules online, so I wrote them out here.
General Knowledge Poker keeps the fun parts of Texas Hold-em but replaces a deck of playing cards with a list of general knowledge questions.
I’m pretty sure Texas Hold-em is the most popular poker variant in the English speaking world. I think part of its popularity is that it gets the balance just right between:
- Giving each player some hidden information to bet on.
- Everyone publicly updating their bets based on new shared information that gets revealed bit by bit each round.
The least fun part about Texas Hold-em (and most poker variants) is that figuring out, or learning, the relative odds of various poker hands feels quite arbitrary.
By using general knowledge questions instead of playing cards, General Knowledge Poker makes the following changes:
- For the hidden information each player secretly writes down their guess for what the right answer is.
- For the shared information that gets revealed bit by bit, hints to the questions are revealed to everyone between rounds of betting.
The winner at the end of four rounds of betting is the player whose own answer is closest to the right one. You bet as normal, using poker chips. The first round of betting is done after players write their answers down, two rounds are done after hints are revealed, a final round is done after the answer is revealed, but before the players know whose answer was closest.
If you’re into probability theory or forecasting, this game works as practice for making updates to your beliefs about real world facts when exposed to new information, with some added room for bluffing and social deduction.
It can also help you calibrate how sure you are about your beliefs in the first place. Remember when I said earlier that the part of poker that’s least fun for new players is learning the relative odds of various poker hands? In General Knowledge Poker t
