Decks of playing cards that display the FlopTurnRiver™ logo, or the QUADRIVAL Enhanced™ logo on their packaging are known as FTR Decks. This is because they contain a “FLOP”, “TURN”, and “RIVER” card. These cards are designed to be used to play poker games that have a flop turn and river structure such as Texas Hold’em and Omaha.
The following rules apply when using these cards…
Holding an FTR card - When a player is dealt an FTR card it has no value until the card of its corresponding round is dealt to the table. This means that the “FLOP” card has no value until the flop cards are dealt, the “TURN” card has no value until the turn card is dealt, and the “RIVER” card has no value until the river card is dealt. In situations where an FTR card is dealt to the table, and one of the players holds the FTR linked to the round it was dealt, the card held by the player will not have a value until after the FTR card has been replaced. This is explained by the “Dealing FTR cards to the table“ rule.
Dealing FTR cards to the table - When one or more FTR cards are dealt to the table they have no value until the final(river) card is dealt. Once the final round action has been completed as normal the dealer then burns the top card of the deck and replaces any FTR cards previously dealt to the table with new cards. Cards are replaced in the order that they were dealt to the table during the hand, so the first FTR card dealt to the table during the hand would be replaced first by the dealer. If the game being played includes the “FTR Action” rule then a further round of action is played before the players can go to showdown and determine a winner.
FTR cards only inherit value - FTR cards can only inherit card values. This means it can never have a suit or a colour, and can therefore never be used to make a flush.
FTR Action - When one or more FTR cards are replaced during a hand, depending on the rules in play, another round of action may be played. This can only be done if the players agreed before the game started that FTR action is allowed. When it comes to tournaments, if the tournaments description/type contains “FTR” then it is using FTR cards without FTR action. However a tournament with “FTRA” in the tournament description/type is using FTR cards with FTR action.
Rounds where more than one card is dealt - When more than one card is dealt in a round then only the value of the first card dealt can be inherited by the FTR card of that round. For example, in Texas Hold’em and Omaha three cards are dealt during the first round(the flop). This means that the “FLOP” card can only have the value of the first card dealt to the table in this round. The first card dealt is often referred to as the “window” or “door” card by poker players. An experienced or well trained dealer will deal three cards face down on top of each other then turn them over together exposing only the first card that was dealt. The cards are then spread to the right so that the window/door card, which was the first card exposed, finishes next to the turn card position. See example below.