Details of 888poker’s Pick’em8 Emerge

When I play video games, there are often times when I have to wait for more players to join before the game starts. Since I apparently have the patience of a four-year old, I always find myself grabbing my phone and just surfing around for no reason, rather than just waiting a minute for the festivities to begin. It seems that I am the type of person 888poker has in mind with its upcoming new game, Pick’em8.

Nothing has been released about Pick’em8 yet, but there is a page for it on 888poker’s website that says “Coming Soon.” If you want to make yourself feel really smart, load that page up and navigate to the “Web Developer” option in the “Tools” menu of the web browser (browsers vary – this was in Firefox). If you choose the “Debugger” from there, you will see the code for the page. Buried in there is the text that will eventually be displayed on the page once the game launches.

You feel like a hacker on CSI: Gibraltar now, don’t you? Let’s enhance, then.

Pick’em8 looks like a casino table game using the concept of an All-in Shootout to create a quick single-hand poker game. To begin, players are shown eight possible hole cards, all face up. They then get to choose two of them. That’s right, in Pick’em8, you get to select your own hole cards!

From there, it’s all academic. The five community cards are dealt and, just like in a regular Texas Hold’em poker game, the best five-card hands are made.

According to the website’s text, “The prize pool is divided between all the holders of the strongest hand. Players with a winning hand are alerted almost immediately after the community cards are dealt.”

That would tend to raise the question as to whether “strongest hand” means strongest possible hand or the strongest hand of the ones played. The former would mean that it would be possible for nobody to win, which also makes me curious to know how many players will be in a game. If it’s an uncapped number, only limited to some set amount of time in between games during which players can register, then the chances of every combination of hole cards being picked – therefore guaranteeing at least one winner – increase. If games start when “x” number of players join, then there would be a greater chance that nobody picks the hole cards that would result in the best possible hand.

If “strongest hand” just means “strongest hand among those played,” just like it is in a regular poker game, then clearly there will be a winner every hand.

Pick’em8 will have buy-ins of $0.25 and $1. A screenshot of the game (images are also buried in the webpage’s code) shows a steep rake of 9 percent; in the image one player is playing a $1 game which has a $0.91 prize pool. The division of the prize pool and the rake also mean that it is possible for people to lose money even while having the winning hand, though that is unlikely unless there are very few players, like single-digits.

When a game is over, players are given the option to play another or return to the lobby. There is no word on when Pick’em8 will debut, but we imagine it will be sometime in the near future.