I'm surprised that I haven't seen this already suggested elsewhere:
Would it be possible to set up a game (or rather a single hand) of Ba'ath Poker with the new political deck our troops are using in Iraq? It would be a very long game, like the Amish Tech Support Dead Pool. Two or more people could play, each one building up a hand as the wanted men and women are rounded up. The first player gets the 7 of Diamonds, already dealt. Whichever of the 55 is captured next is the first card in the second player's hand, and so on around the virtual table. If the number of players is kept small and things go well in Iraq, there would be opportunities to discard and replace. Since some of them are likely to be caught in groups, there would have to be tie-breakers defined in advance: perhaps the order of the names in the first New York Times or Command Post story would determine the order in which they would be dealt. What to do about those who are killed would also be a question, since it seems to be taking quite a while to determine who's dead and who's alive. But the same applies to the Dead Pool: I've got Tariq Aziz on my list, and there's really no telling whether he's dead or alive.
I don't know much about Poker, except that there are a lot of varieties, so players would have to decide beforehand which to play. Texas Hold'Em has the most appropriate name, but others might have more appropriate rules. With 55 cards in the deck, it would obviously have to be a version that includes Jokers.
Posted by Dr. Weevil at April 12, 2003 09:48 PM"Must include jokers"
Must... resist... information minister joke...
Posted by: Sean Kirby on April 12, 2003 11:53 PMPoker isn't much fun with all the cards dealt up. Blackjack against a dealer, on the other hand, might work out nicely.
Posted by: Aaron Haspel on April 13, 2003 04:11 PMI was partly thinking not of real Poker, but Pokerlike card games. There's at least one form of solitaire (called 'Poker') that involves dealing 25 cards one at a time onto a 5 x 5 grid. Final score is calculated by treating each of the five rows and five columns as a Poker hand: the more straights and flushes and such, the better.
Not to mention that if we deal all the Ba'ath cards as a single hand, we've already got a pair of Fives. Not bad for only three random cards.
Posted by: Dr. Weevil on April 13, 2003 04:46 PMHmmm...hard to say unless we know how many cards will be dealt, as it were. Probably the simplest would be five-card stud or draw, though there is the problem of open cards, as Mr. Haspel (who can play an okay game of poker himself) has stated. I'd go with the stud, with you somehow keeping the players' first cards hidden. Lemme think about this.
Posted by: Ken Goldstein on April 13, 2003 10:20 PMtexas hold`em would be the perfect poker game to play with the cards..think about it our president is from texas and we are gonna hold each of these people for a very long time
Posted by: Jerry McCloud on August 1, 2003 08:38 AMI am thrilled to find this site-listing the MOST WANTED in the order of their capture.
I am making a scrapbook for each of my granddaughters on the MOST WANTED.
I am using the first list to organize, but put their corresponding number of the Cetcom list.
Do you have a reason why they were resuffle??