Texas Scrabbl'em

Texas Scrabbl'em is a fun combination of poker and scrabble. The game works like this:

1. Players each get dealt two tiles face-down. First round of betting.

2. Three tiles are dealt face-up. Second round of betting.

3. A fourth tile is dealt face-up. Third round of betting.

4. A fifth tile is dealt face-up. Last round of betting.

If there's a showdown, the winner is the player who can put down the highest-scoring word on the board, using any combination of his tiles and/or the shared face-up tiles. The word has to fit with the words already placed, as per normal Scrabble rules. The word is placed on the board, and the remaining tiles go back in the bag. If all players but one fold, the winner doesn't have to show his tiles, and no word is put down that round.

The game ends when there aren't enough tiles left in the bag for another round.

I found a few people thinking along similar ideas (see link), but those are more 'Poker using Scrabble tiles' whereas my version is more 'Scrabble with poker-style betting'. The nice thing about my version is that you'll actually be playing a game of Scrabble, laying out words on the board as you go along, so players have to find the best words to fit into the layout, rather than simply seeing who can make the longest word each round.

The changing layout should help keep the game interesting: no good having a seven-letter word if you can't place it somewhere! A 'q' could be a good tile to hold when a 'u' is free on the board somewhere, but risky otherwise, like drawing to an inside straight. And does that guy who just raised your bet really have an 's' to put on the end of 'croissant' and sneak down to the triple word score, or is he just bluffing?