Howdy folks! To update, rules team has kept with the modification rule, therefore the Heretic joker can only reduce a player’s hand down to King high (K-Q-J-10-8). As lowering a player’s hand rank raises it to the highest it could possibly be, that is the result, whereas raising a player’s hand rank puts it at the lowest possible rank it could be.
I hope that makes some sense to everyone, but it will be fully clarified in the updated rulebook, which will be up and active by this weekend!
As stated above, per the rule book of course, Hand Rank 11 always ties Hand Rank 11 (Dead Man’s Hand).
So, independent of whether the play hand is for lowball or a shootout, a modification of hand ranks follows the “raised to lowest and lowered to highest” format, but with a new “floor”?
Yes. Lowball has a tie breaker. If both hands are the exact same (let’s say you both reduced hands to HR 1 thanks to Cheatin resolutions) then draw again to break the tie. Because if they were both reuced to 1, they are K high.
In a shootout, the leader eats casualties first if there is an exact tie. As Lapp said above, that happens whenever the hands are HR 11 because there is only one combination of cards that makes a HR 11.
If I am understanding this correctly, this newest change has an impact on the efficacy of the Heretic Joker to ‘automatically’ win lowball in many circumstances.
If the ‘floor’ is six-high, a lowball Heretic will frequently automatically be the Winner.
With the ‘floor’ now being king-high (the latest ruling), a lowball Heretic will often beat any other hand except a High Card.