• Follow the Queen is a variation of seven-card stud with wild cards.Poker image by Bluekea from Fotolia.com
  
  Perhaps the most popular card game with "queen" in its name is the "Follow the Queen" variety of poker, a game that takes the rules of seven-card stud and gives them a slight tweak. The game uses the queens in the deck as a lead-in to a wild card, meaning any player can use the wild card as whatever card they need to make a better hand.
  
  

Dealing the Cards

• The game is played by between two and six players. Each player is dealt two cards face down, and can look at his cards and decide what he wants to bet on his starting hand. The player to the left of the dealer starts the bidding and each remaining player chooses to call the bet, raise it or fold his hand.
  
  

The Second Round of Bets

• When the first round of betting is completed, each player receives a third card face up. If the dealer deals a queen, the next card turned over becomes the "wild card." If the second player gets a queen and the third player gets an ace, aces become the wild card for everyone's hand. The player who receives the queen and the player to his left who receives the new wild card has to pay double the ante into the pot. Players make their bets, call or fold and the round ends.
  
  

Playing the Game

• When the second round of betting is completed, the dealer deals a fourth card, face up, to each player. Each participant bets, calls or folds, based on the four cards she now sees in her hand. If in the process of dealing another player receives a queen facing up, the wild card changes to the card following that queen. If the fourth player receives a queen and the fifth player receives a six, the ace is replaced by the six as the wild card for all players. The betting continues until all players have six cards, four face up and two face down.
  
  

The Final Deal

• The players have the choice to receive the seventh card face up or face down. This is a strategy used for players hoping to get one last queen to change the wild card for the hand. If a player chooses to have the card dealt face up and the queen appears, but the other players choose to have their final cards dealt face down, the wild card remains the same. If no queen appears in the up position in any hand, the game plays out with no wild card. Other variations of the game will cancel the entire hand if there is no queen dealt and all players re-ante for the next hand.
  
  

Winning the Hand

• Each player uses the seven cards to make the best five-card poker hand possible. The winning hand is determined as it would be by typical poker rules. Because there is a wild card, a five-of-a-kind is the highest hand, followed by the Royal Flush. A single high card is the lowest hand. The wild card can be used to represent any card in the deck to fulfill the player's hand. Whoever ends up with the best hand wins the money in the pot. If two hands tie, the hand without use of a wild card, or "natural hand," wins over one using a wild card. If both hands are identical, the players split the pot.