In the games described earlier in this poker chapter, the goal is to create the best possible five-card hand. Poker players are, by turns, both optimistic and pessimistic, so somewhere along the line some would-be clever individual thought it would be neat to play games where you went for the lowest hand possible, with straights and flushes not counting against you. After that, a would-be even cleverer person no doubt thought it would be neater to create games where players could go for the lowest and the highest possible hands, with the pot split evenly between the two winners. Thus high-low split poker was born.
