Grid Poker

Goal

Draft cards from a grid and build three 5-card poker hands with them. Your strongest hand is compared with everybody else’s strongest, and the same for the middle and weakest hands. The player with the most points wins.

Cards

Use a standard 52-card deck and 2 Jokers, 54 cards in all. Every card is used. What a Joker can do is set out under Hand rankings.

Play

1. Deal a grid. Deal 9 cards face up in a 3×3 grid.
2. First pick. The first picker takes all 3 cards of any one row or column. The first pick passes to the left with every new grid.
3. Second pick. The next player to the left takes every card left in one row or column, which is 2 or 3 cards.
4. The rest of the grid. With 2 players, the cards still in the grid are discarded. With 3 players, the player who hasn’t picked takes all of them.
5. Keep your drafted cards face up in front of you.
6. Deal 6 grids in all. That uses the whole deck. With 2 players you finish with 15 to 18 cards, and with 3 players 16 to 20.
7. Build your hands. Everybody builds at the same time and in secret. Make three 5-card poker hands from your drafted cards. The cards you don’t use are out of the game. Then everybody shows their hands.

Scoring

Put your three hands in order from strongest to weakest. Compare everybody’s strongest hands, then everybody’s middle hands, then everybody’s weakest hands.

• With 2 players, the stronger hand in each comparison scores 1 point.
• With 3 players, the strongest hand in each comparison scores 2 points and the second strongest scores 1.
• Equal hands each score the points for the better place. With 2 players, both score 1. With 3 players, two hands tied for strongest score 2 each and the third scores 0, two hands tied for second score 1 each, and three equal hands score 2 each.

The player with the most points wins. If players tie on points, the one whose weakest hand is stronger wins. If those hands are equal too, the tied players share the win.

Hand rankings

Hands rank from strongest, at the top, to weakest.

Open the rules page