home game poker dispute

in my weekly home game we play a game called low in the hole in a 7-card format. the player in question had the ace of spade and two fours in the hole. the basic rules of poker state an ace can be low in a straight. we also have a house rule stating aces can be used low in all situations (e.g.
low card in the hole). at the showdown the player in question flips his
cards and declares his two fours low and therefore wild. he matches his
two fours with the 3 and 5 of spades and use his hole ace of spades to declare a straight flush. half the table maintains he has an ace high flush
only saying he could not use the ace low after declaring the fours low the
rest maintain the right to use an ace low in a straight is a basic poker rule and not "declared" just always an option.

The simplest logical answer is that he has an A high flush, not a straight flush. Allowing an A to high or low is fine but it is still a declaration (whether overt or not). The moment he claimed that the fours were his lowest down cards he declared, by default, that his Ace was going to be used as a high card. Therefore he cannot then subsequently use the Ace as his low card for the straight flush.

"we also have a house rule stating aces can be used low in all situations"

If this is the house rule, then he made a straight flush. All means all. So he had no reason to declare the Ace as low.

smd173 said:

"we also have a house rule stating aces can be used low in all situations"

If this is the house rule, then he made a straight flush. All means all. So he had no reason to declare the Ace as low.

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Regardless of house rule, the Ace cannot be both high and low in one hand. It is one or the other for any particular hand. Otherwise you'd get people calling wrap-around straights (QKA23) as legit because the A is both high and low. The game requires that a low card declaration be made, and those declarations are binding. Because the declaration comes immediately before the showdown (during construction of the final holding), any rule of high/low card use is superceded by that declaration. So at showdown, when "cards read", that A was high by implied declaration (e.g. because he declared the fours to be the lowest holding in his down cards, the A in his down cards must be high, because if it was low, then it would the be the lowest card in his hand which we know it isn't because he declared the fours to be the lowest.).

And all of this is exactly why wild cards suck. I've lost hands at goofball dealer call it home games when I held a natural straight flush and some goofball had a pair plus three wild cards for five of a kind. LOL

thats the point. you're not "declaring" the ace anything, rather just
using it in one of its capacities. in the "ranking of hands" straight run
from ace to ace. high or low. if the ace of spades had been an up card
he would not have "declared" it low and used it. it is just simply usable
in that way.

Understood. But this isn't about up cards, it is about the game's specific rule that you must declare which of your down cards is the lowest. If he declares the four to be the lowest of his down cards, then the A must be higher, ergo the A is indirectly defined as high. It's double dipping to allow the A to be low after saying that it wasn't because you wanted two wild cards.

Guess you have a new/modified rule for your dealer makes it up as they go along games.

remember, he didn't use the ace as his low. it wasn't being used as a wild card. just as its capacity as an ace.

hotsauce said:

remember, he didn't use the ace as his low. it wasn't being used as a wild card. just as its capacity as an ace.

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Huh?

You said he wanted a straight flush with his As, 3s, and 5s and his two wild cards. This is a wheel and by definition the A is being used as a low value (in its capacity as an A).

I used to play lot's of home games with wild cards involved. JD is right.
Look at it this way, your ace can be used as a "1" or a "14", when it comes to straights (where J is 11, Q is 12, K is 13). If you are going to use the A as a "1", your 4's are no longer wild as they're not your low cards. By declaring a 5 high straight flush, You can't have it both ways.

You could, however, use it to your advantage if you had a 4 as an up card to make quads.

low card in the hole is just what it means IMO, which is, the lowest card in your hand is the wild one but you have to declare if the ace will be used as a high card or low card even before tha game can start, and if using tha ace for the value that it represents in all poker games, then the 3 became the low card in the hole.