The Rules of Thresh

Charles's Original Rules

Thresh is a card game, played with the standard thresh deck. The deck is composed of five normal suits of ten cards each, one for each god but Geskekelud, with lesser cards numbered from 1 to 6, and High cards ranked Ruler, Mage, Priest, and Hero. (Hero > Priest > Mage > Ruler) Geskekelud has a normal set of High cards, but only five lesser cards, which are unnumbered. The deck is rounded out to sixty by the Tzalin, or sometimes nowadays by the Ghoras.

Thresh is similar to poker, although its played in six card hands. The hands are Balance (one card from each God), Guilds (normal, major, master, and double, corresponding to three, four, five of a kind and two three of a kinds), Dominance (five of a suit), Total Dominance (6 of a suit), Alliance (two half flushes(three cards of the same suit), except if the suits are directly opposed), and Oppisition (two half flushes from opposed suits). Most of these can also be modified by being "High" (all relevant cards in the hand are High cards) or "Perfect" (all relevant cards in the hand are the same rank).

The five Geskekelud cards can be counted as any lesser rank, but two cards in the same hand can't be the same rank. The all Anz cards are treated as being the same rank as any other Anz card in the hand. Depending on local, the Tzalin/Ghoras is either totally wild, or it makes any normally recognized hand worthless, but if the other five cards in your hand aren't a normal hand, it automatically wins. Finally, a common variant gives each High card a power. Hero's can "kill" one lesser card in any hand, Priests can convert one lesser card in the owner's hand to their suit, A Mage can take one lesser card from another hand, but gives itself in return, and a Ruler converts one lesser card of its suit in the owners hand to any lesser rank.

Dave's Revised Rules

here it is, for you safety and convenience, the newly revised edition of the thresh hand rankings. this includes the anz and geskekelud weirdshit, i hope. i've added a few hands (when i say ``a few'' i really mean ``a lot''). a balanced guild is both a balance and a guild (no surprise there); a high balanced guild is like a b.g. except all six cards are high; a balanced high guild is like a h.b.g. except only the guild cards are high. there are no splefty grandmaster hands because they all reduce to something else. also, this is assuming that the anz weirdshit only applies to number cards. fortunately, most types of hands can't be perfect, so the list is shorter than it could be. if anyone actually looks at the numbers :) they will notice how close some of them are, so a small numerical error can mess things up badly. for comparison, the odds of a royal flush are about a million to one, and of a straight flush are about 100 thousand to one.




Hand                        Number     Odds Against

High Perfect Balance             4      12,515,965
Perfect Balance                 30       1,668,795
High Opposition                 48       1,042,997
High Balanced Master Guild      72         695,331
High Double Guild              120         417,199
Balanced High Master Guild     144         347,666
High Alliance                  192         260,749
Balanced Master Guild          294         170,285
Balanced Double Guild          300         166,879
High Balanced Major Guild      540          92,711
High Master Guild             1056          47,409
Total Dominance               1260          39,733
High Balanced Guild           1440          34,767
High Double Guild             2280          21,958
High Balance                  4096          12,223
Balanced High Major Guild     4320          11,588
Grandmaster Guild             4375          11,443
Balanced Major Guild          4860          10,301
Opposition                  43,152           1,160
Balanced High Guild         50,400             933
Balanced Guild              64,300             779
Dominance                   75,600             662
Double Guild		   146,460	       342
Master Guild               149,280             335
High Major Guild           171,720             292
Alliance                   172,608             290
Balance                    769,480              65
Major Guild              1,322,640              38
High Guild              11,905,800               4.2
Guild                      LOTS