Did Ross Let Rachel Win? The Friends Poker Game, Explained

Rachel turns over a full house, and Ross puts his cards down face down and says, "You got me." Then he looks at her celebrating and says, "Look how happy she is." And when his friends try to see his cards, he won't let them. 30 years later, people still argue about it. Did Ross let Rachel win? Today, we're going to settle it with the rules and the math, and along the way, you'll see four rule breaks in that one hand that would start a real fight at your home game. This is season 1, episode 18 of Friends, the one with all the poker. The guys have a regular game, the girls ask why they've never been invited, and the guys admit they don't know any women who play. So, the girls ask to learn. And this is the most realistic part of the whole episode. It's not a casino, >> [music] >> it's a kitchen table, cheap snacks, small stakes, friends who know each other way too well. That's a home game, and that's exactly why the stuff that happens in it is worth breaking down. The teaching night is pure chaos. They're playing five-card draw, where you get five cards, bet, throw away the ones you don't want, and draw new ones. Phoebe asks for the 10 of spades and the six of clubs like it's a menu, and Rachel actually hands her the 10 of spades from her own hand. That's the first thing every new player has to learn. The draw is blind. You say how many cards you want, never which ones, and they come off the top of the deck. Then Ross mentions that Phoebe threw away two jacks because they didn't look happy. In a lot of draw games, the rule is jacks are better. You need at least a pair of jacks to open the betting. So, she threw away the exact hand she needed to start the pot. At the end of the night, Rachel gets up to leave, and the guys stop her. We got to settle. And Ross reads it out. Phoebe owes 750, Monica owes 10, and Rachel owes 15. Every home game has this moment. The game's over, somebody's holding the money, somebody's doing math out loud, and somebody's trying to slip out the door before the numbers come out. Joey even offers to forget the money because it's their first time, and Monica says, "Absolutely not. We'll pay, and we want a rematch." This is honestly the reason I built Home Game Poker. At my game, that end-of-night math takes about 10 seconds. Every buy-in is logged, the app shows who's up and who's down, and tells everybody exactly who pays who. Nobody's reading numbers off a napkin, and nobody slips out owing 15 big ones. >> [music] >> Before the rematch, Monica brings in Aunt Iris, who's been playing since she was five, and her first lesson is bluffing. Her line, more or less, is that you can't believe anything anyone says at a poker table. And it works. Rachel shows up and shuffles like a dealer, and the guys just stare. In the rematch, they play a game called Cincinnati, where everybody gets five cards plus five shared cards in the middle. Ross shows a flush, and Rachel beats it with four sixes. Then Rachel raises, Ross folds, and Ross asks to see what she had. She says no, he reaches for her cards, and she covers them up. And Rachel's completely right. If everybody folds to you, you win the pot without showing anything. Nobody's entitled to see an uncalled hand, and you never ever reach for another player's cards. That's your first ruling, and Rachel wins it. Then the big one. Rachel gets a phone call during the game. The job she was counting on fell through. She sits back down and deals five-card draw, jacks or better, nothing wild, everybody antes. Monica checks, Joey checks, Ross bets 50 cents, Chandler calls, Phoebe's in. Then Rachel raises $5. And Ross says what everyone's thinking, I thought it was a 50-cent limit. He's right. In a limit game, a raise can only be the size of the limit. Rachel just turned a 50-cent game into a $5 game because she had a bad day. At a real table, you change the stakes between hands, and everybody has to agree. Everybody folds except Ross, and Ross actually folds, too. He puts his cards down and gets up from the table. Rachel calls him out for his whole once the cards are dealt, I'm not a nice guy speech, and he sits back down and says, "I'm in." [music] That's rule break number two. Once you folded out loud and put your cards down, your hand is dead. You don't get to pick it back up because somebody hurt your feelings. Now the draw. Ross takes one card. Rachel's the dealer, and she takes two. >> [music] >> Ross bets $2, Rachel raises 20, Ross raises 25, and the pot is suddenly bigger than anything these people have ever played for. Rachel's out of money, so she sends Monica for her purse. It's empty, so she bets out of Monica's purse instead. And she says, "I raise you seven." And Phoebe yells, "Teen!" and throws in a 10. [music] Two more rule breaks. Most home games play table stakes, which means you can only bet what was in front of you when the hand started. No purses, no wallets, no running to the ATM in the middle of a hand. And seven plus somebody else yelling teen isn't how a bet works. You say your amount once or you put the chips in once and that's the bet. Then Ross is 15 short so Chandler hands him [music] 10 and Joey hands him five in the middle of the hand. So now there are IOU's flying around the table that nobody wrote down. That's how friendships get weird after poker night. Ross calls the 17 and asks what she's got. And that order is correct. Rachel made the last raise so when Ross calls Rachel shows first. She tables a full house. Ross looks at it, puts his cards on the table face down and says, "You got me." And here's the rule that decides the whole thing. The pot goes to the best hand that's shown. Once Ross turns his cards face down and gives up his hand is dead even if it was better. So whatever he was holding, Rachel wins that pot fair and square. >> [music] >> Now the math. Rachel drew two cards which means she most likely kept three of a kind. From three of a kind drawing two you make a full house or better about one time in 10. Ross drew one so he kept four cards. Two pair or four to a flush or a straight. And after the draw he didn't just call. He re-raised $25 which is a lot in a 50 cent game. A guy who missed his draw usually doesn't re-raise a player who just raised him 20. Then look at what happens after. He doesn't show, he says, "Look how happy she is." And when Chandler and Joey dive for his cards he stops them. The show never tells us what he had but everything it does show points one way. Ross had her beat and he gave her the pot on the worst day of her year. So yes, Ross let Rachel win. By the rules it was a legal win because a mucked hand can't win. But as poker, he folded the winning hand. >> [music] >> If you want your game to run better than Monica's apartment, set the stakes before the deal, a fold is final, table stakes only, and settle up before anybody leaves. I keep all of it in the app, buy-ins, IOU's, and the final who pays who, and the link is in the description. If you want to play the exact game they were playing, here's how five card draw works. And tell me in the comments, in Ross's seat would you have shown your cards? >> [music] >> Mhm.