Square Deal

Full rules

1. Overview
2. Card order and poker hands
3. Setup
4. Playing a turn
5. No talking
6. Scoring and winning
7. Difficulty levels
8. Tips for beginners
9. Variants

Overview

Square Deal is a cooperative card game for two: you form one team and win or lose together. Between you lies a grid of five rows and five columns, and every row and every column becomes a five-card poker hand – ten hands in all. You take turns placing one card at a time into the grid. Each of you holds three secret cards, and you may not talk about them. When all 25 places are filled, you score the ten hands; if the total reaches the target, you have won.

• Players: 2.
• You need: one standard 52-card deck without jokers, a table with room for a 5 × 5 grid of cards, and pencil and paper.

Square Deal is a new game written for this site and not yet playtested. It is our own cooperative version of the classic patience Poker Squares, which one person plays alone. The target is the first thing to tune: if your games are won or lost too easily, change it before anything else (see "Difficulty levels").

Card order and poker hands

Cards rank A K Q J 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2. The suits (♠ ♥ ♦ ♣) have no rank; they only matter for flushes.

A poker hand is a group of five cards. Each row and each column of the grid is scored as one poker hand, using the table below (the English scoring of Poker Squares). In a straight the Ace counts high (10-J-Q-K-A) or low (A-2-3-4-5), but a straight cannot go "round the corner": Q-K-A-2-3 is not a straight.

A row or column scores only its best combination – a full house is not also counted as three of a kind and a pair. The points are not in the usual poker order: they follow how hard a hand is to build in a grid, so a straight is worth more than a full house, and a flush less than three of a kind.

Setup

1. Sit next to or opposite each other, with room for the grid between you. Decide who starts – in these rules that is Anna.
2. Shuffle and deal 3 cards to each player, one at a time. These are your hand: look at them, but don't show them to your partner.
3. Put the other 46 cards face down beside the grid as the shared stock (the pile you draw from).
4. Agree on the target: 60 points for a normal game (see "Difficulty levels").

The grid starts empty: just leave room for five rows of five cards.

Playing a turn

Anna begins; then you take turns. On your turn:

1. Place one card from your hand face up on any empty place in the grid. You may start anywhere and leave gaps to fill later.
2. Draw the top card of the stock, so that you hold three cards again.

A placed card never moves again. After 25 turns – Anna places 13 cards, Ben 12 – the grid is full and the game ends. The cards left in your hands and in the stock don't count: only 25 of the 52 cards ever reach the grid.

No talking

During the game you may not say anything about your cards or your plans: no "I've got a King", no "keep that row for me", no pointing and no groaning when your partner places a card. You may talk about the rules and whose turn it is, and you may look at the grid as long as you like. Everything you learn about your partner's hand, you learn from where they put their cards.

Example: The picture shows a game after twelve cards; it is Anna's turn. Without a word, the two of you have fallen into a common pattern: each row collects one rank – Kings in row 1, 5s in row 2, 6s in row 3 – and the columns collect suits: spades in column 1, hearts in column 2, clubs in column 4. Column 1 is already a finished flush, and column 3 takes the cards that fit nowhere else. Anna holds 5♥, 9♣ and 7♦. The 5♥ fits twice: in row 2 it is the third 5, in column 2 the third heart. She places it there and draws a card. Ben has understood: the last empty place in row 2 is for the 5♦. If he gets it, it goes there – four of a kind.

Scoring and winning

When the grid is full, score the five rows and the five columns and add up the ten results. Every card counts twice: once in its row and once in its column.

• You win together if the total reaches the target (Normal: 60 points).
• Otherwise you lose – write down the score and try to beat it next time.

There is no other way to lose: on every turn there is an empty place, so the grid is always completed. Play it out even if the target can no longer be reached.

The game from the picture ends with this grid. Column 3, the place for leftovers, has become a straight:

Example: The rows bring 10 + 16 + 6 + 3 + 1 = 36 points, the columns 5 + 5 + 12 + 0 + 5 = 27. Together that is 63 – the Normal target of 60 is reached, Hard (75) is not. Row 4 shows a trade: the 9♦ made two pairs there, but it spoiled column 4, which now holds only four clubs and scores nothing.

Difficulty levels

The budget: ten hands have to reach the target. 60 points means an average of 6 per hand – as if every row and every column held three of a kind. Pairs (1) and flushes (5) alone won't get you there; you need a few big hands such as a straight (12), a full house (10) or four of a kind (16).

In a computer simulation with a simple strategy – each player places the card that improves the grid most at that moment, with no plan and no reading of the partner – solo Poker Squares, one card at a time, averaged 43 points. Two players with three secret cards each averaged 55; a quarter of the games reached 63 or more, one in ten 70 or more. So Easy asks for about what one player makes alone, Normal for more than the average, and Hard for a score the simple strategy reached in fewer than one game in ten. Humans play differently – they plan ahead and read each other's cards – so treat the targets as a first guess and change them if they don't suit you.

Tips for beginners

• Agree on nothing – but read the first cards. A common pattern is "rows for ranks, columns for suits": pairs, three of a kind and full houses in the rows, flushes in the columns. If your partner puts two Kings side by side, that row wants Kings.
• Watch where your partner builds. Don't put a stray card into a row or column they are clearly collecting for.
• Keep a spare line for cards that fit nowhere else. With a little luck it becomes a straight, which is worth 12.
• Use both directions. Every card counts in a row and in a column; the best place helps both, like the 5♥ in the example.
• Count what is left. Only 25 of the 52 cards reach the grid, so don't keep a place open too long for one particular card.

Variants

All optional – agree before you start.

• Open hands: play with your hands face up, but still without talking – good for learning.
• Two cards each: hold only two cards instead of three. Fewer choices make a harder game.