What is a geocaching poker run?

When we went to the AJACS geocaching event, we were introduced to a “Poker Run”. Now, never having DONE a poker run before I was really interested to see how this event would happen.

Frankly, I’m no good a poker. Just ask my grandma. (Shown below in her EatStayPlay.com apron!) Every Thanksgiving, the family gathers at her house. And after the turkey is consumed and the left overs put away, Nana proceeds to whip my you-know-what in poker.

Can you tell this is her favorite apron?

I’m terrible at it!

So the idea of playing geocaching poker… Well, I figured I might as well give it a shot.

I had figured that you’d go to some caches (5 maybe?) and pick a card to make a hand. But what I just couldn’t figure out what how that would be FAIR. I mean, wouldn’t the first person to each cache just get to choose cards that would make a Royal whatever-you-call-it?

Boy! Was I ever wrong!

Here’s how the poker run we participated in happened:

Number One: Ante up.

In this case, we needed to provide a quality trade item. The winner of the poker run was going to win a fully-stoked ammo can cache ready to hid.

(I contributed a first-aid kit)

Number Two: Get the cords

The fantastic coordinators from AJACS hid 5 caches around camp. So, all we had to do was visit each cache.

Number Three: Pick the cards.

Ah-ha! We were part of deck “B”. (There were over 200 people at the event so there were multiple decks in each cache.)

At each of the 5 caches, we just picked a card from deck “B”.

Now, remember how I was worried about fair? Well, turns out each card is in a sealed envelope. They’re even the blue-inside security envelopes so you can’t see the card. Just collect one envelope from each can and return the UNOPENED envelopes to the organizers.

To make it even better, each envelop had a big “B” written on it as well as the number of the cache: 1-5.

Number Four: Reveal the hand.

Just to give the team a fighting chance, I was very careful not to pick cards in any way. At ALL. When we got back to the registration, the event hosts opened the cards and wrote down our hand.

Not touching the cards must have paid off. We had the highest hand in our deck.

Three threes!

My Nana was so proud!

How do cachers in your area do a poker run? Our caches were all practically IN camp and very easy to find. Have you ever done a run where the caches were difficult to find?