Even if you have a poker rule book memorized, the minute you sit down at a casino’s poker table, you’re probably playing under rules that you don’t know about.
How can that be? Simple — “House rules.” These are custom-made rules for just one poker room that supplement or substitute for the standard set of rules to which players are accustomed.
Poker is far from the only game that has provisions for such specialized rules. In Major League Baseball, each stadium has its own “ground rules.” Famously, for example, a ball that sticks in the vines covering the outfield wall at Wrigley Field is a double.