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Goal

Be the first to win 6 poker hands. You have no hand to hold: you turn cards up from your own deck, one at a time, and choose how many to spend on each hand.

Cards

Each player has a whole deck of their own, 52 cards. The Twos are wild. Every other card ranks as in poker, Ace high.

Setup

Shuffle your deck and put it face down in front of you.

Play

1. Start a hand: both players turn up the top card of their deck. Each player’s face-up cards are their poker hand.
2. Whoever has the weaker hand chooses: turn up another card, or concede the hand. Compare again after every card.
3. Level hands: both players turn up a card.
4. The hand ends when someone concedes. The other player wins it, and every face-up card is out of the game.

A player who has to turn up a card and has none left concedes. Once a player has 5 wins, the other player may not concede until they run out of cards.

Scoring

Make the best five-card poker hand from your face-up cards. How hands rank, how a row of fewer than five cards counts, and what a wild card can be are set out under Hand rankings.

Level best hands. If either player has more than five cards, the cards left over make a second hand to break the tie, then a third. Any card beats no card.

If both decks run out, the player with more wins takes the game. Equal wins is a draw.

Hand rankings

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

1. Straight flush 5 cards in sequence, all one suit. The Ace high one is a royal flush.
2. Four of a kind 4 cards of one rank
3. Full house 3 cards of one rank and 2 of another
4. Flush 5 cards of one suit
5. Straight 5 cards in sequence, including 5, 4, 3, 2, A
6. Three of a kind 3 cards of one rank
7. Two pair 2 cards of one rank and 2 of another
8. Pair 2 cards of one rank
9. High card none of the above, so the highest card counts

Fewer than five cards. The missing cards count as worthless, and a straight or a flush needs all five. So a pair of 5s loses to a pair of 5s with a 3 , and beats Ace, King, Queen, Jack .

Wild cards. A Two can be any card that’s not already in your row, so is three Kings. There’s no five of a kind, and a flush has one Ace at most. With Jokers wild, a Joker does this instead and the Twos are ordinary cards.

Variants

• Jokers wild: each deck has both Jokers, 54 cards. The Jokers are wild and the Twos are ordinary cards.
• No wilds: every card is an ordinary card.