I saw Dead Hand Chaos Poker listed in the GenCon catalogue at the 2004 convention and thought I'd give it a shot. At first, I was quite wary that it would be too random. It was marketed at "Poker meets Russian roulette," and "Chaos Poker," after all.

And while those are fair descriptions, I found it quite good. In fact, I think this is a game that both casual card players and more traditional poker players (like myself) will all enjoy.

There were 9 people who showed up for the same session as I, and we split into two groups. We were told that the dealer could choose one of three games – seven card stud, five card stud or five card draw.

My group played about a 3 to 1 ratio of seven card stud over five card draw. We did not play five card stud at all. At first, we kept it very vanilla. Eventually, we started to mix in a wild or two.

You play Dead Hand just like a normal hand of poker. Except that after all cards are revealed at the end, the top card of the deck is flipped. According to the rules, 60% of the cards have a "hidden" message on them. That's really just varnish in the black border of the card – easy to see when you tilt the card in the light, but virtually invisible if you're not looking for it.

The messages say things like "All straights are dead" (A-Diamond), "The hand with the low heart is dead" (K-Heart) and "The highest ranked hand is dead" (any 9).

According to the rules, this alters the winner of a hand about 20% of the time. And, although I wasn't keeping track, that seemed about right. Actually, over the course of the two hours, I'd bet (so to speak) that it was slightly lower at my table.

But I quickly realized that this was not really a truly random feature – a good player would adjust to maximize both Dead Hand card and pot odds. While playing seven card stud, I started noticing which cards were coming out and which I hadn't seen yet. So if I hadn't seen any three's, I'd take a quick glance at one of the cross-reference cards that accompany the deck and figure out how likely my hand (or my opponent's hand) would get killed. And bet accordingly.

Besides swinging a couple of pots every now and again, the overall effect of possibly drawing a Dead Hand was to make people who were trailing the hand stay in just a little while longer. And it made those in a strong position think twice about pushing the stakes up very high.

All in all, I found Dead Hand Poker to have somewhat less of an effect on the outcome as adding one wild card would. Which is a good thing. For a good player, it's one more thing to consider. For a poor player, it's one more chance to get lucky.

And that's where this game's appeal really lies for me – the Thursday night neighborhood game. With this deck, the dealer can decide if you're playing straight up or using the Dead Hand feature. It gives your group of friends a little more variety and increases the chances of creating some really thrilling and memorable showdowns.

I did ask the designer about Texas Hold 'Em, since that's all the rage currently. He said there tends to be too many large holdover pots created because the Dead Hand will knock everyone out from time to time. But for most other games, it works great.

So I give the game a hearty endorsement for casual and veteran poker players alike. We're not going to see it at the World Series of Poker anytime soon, but it's welcome at my table any time.

Oh, and as far as the tournament at GenCon went, I managed to win it. The finals were a showdown between me and the winner from the other group. Of couse, I lost the hand, but won on a Dead Hand. How appropriate!