Travel Report: LAPT9 Panama, Day 3 -- Playing Sgt. Pepper

The penultimate day of the Latin American Poker Tour Panama Main Event was a quick one, with the players getting from 32 down to eight by early evening, permitting us to get away early enough to enjoy a leisurely dinner at the Sortis Hotel, Spa & Casino.

Sergio, Will, and I went back over to the Score Sports Bar for our meal, which was leisurely indeed with another lengthy wait for the dishes. During that interim I pulled out my Beatles deck of cards -- a recent gift from Vera -- and dealt a few hands of a game I’m inventing called “Sgt. Pepper.”

It’s a Badugi variant and is still in beta, although I’ll tell you instead of needing four different suits in your hand to make a Badugi, all that’s required is to have a single, lonely heart among the four cards -- the other three can be anything else -- to make what I’m calling a “Fab Four.”

One rule Sergio introduced which I like is that if two players happen to hold the same hand, the one with the lowest heart wins.

Meanwhile, when a player stands pat, that’s choosing to “Let it Be.” I want to introduce another twist allowing a player to swap hands with an opponent, a move announced with the phrase “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” although I’m not sure as yet when and under what circumstances that will be allowed.

I’m not too eager to introduce lots of wild cards into the came, although perhaps it might be worth my getting some advantage “When I’m Sixty-Four.” Perhaps there could be variants of Sgt. Pepper -- “Eight Days a Week” (in which eights are wild) or “Revolution 9” (where nines are) or “Sun King” (making kings the best card to have, not the worst).

Having a three-card hand and drawing to a Fab Four is called “Fixing a Hole.” A “Cry Baby Cry”-ing call after the third draw that turns out to be a loser is referred to as “I Should Have Known Better” (or, if it’s a particularly bad call, “I’m a Loser”). And when someone folds to your bet rather than calling, that’s a “You Won’t See Me.”

Like I say, the game is still being developed, so I welcome any ideas. I’d like to say in the end I was able to invent Sgt. Pepper with a little help from my friends.