Poker squares

Poker Squares (also known as, Poker Solitaire, or Poker Patience) is a patience game with the objective of building the best poker hands using just 25 cards from the deck.[1] It rewards both lucky guessing and accurate calculation of odds.[2]

Poker squares
A patience game
The end of a game of poker solitaire, scoring 197 (US, scores shown in blue) or 66 (English, yellow). Horizontally, the five hands formed were two full houses (jacks full of aces and nines full of sevens), a four-of-a-kind (four eights), Three tens, and a two-pair (sixes and fives). Vertically, four flushes (one for each suit) and a pair of fours are scored.
Named variantsPoker shuffle, serpent poker solitaire
FamilyNon-builder
DeckSingle 52-card
See also Glossary of solitaire

Rules

The game starts with placing a card onto a space in a 5x5 grid. Cards are placed one at a time and once a card is placed on the grid, it can no longer be moved.

Once all 25 cards are dealt, points are scored on hands of 5 cards formed horizontally in rows or vertically in columns.[3] The number of points depend on the hierarchy of poker hands.

There are two systems of scoring: The English and the American point systems. The English system reflects the difficulty of getting the hands in the game; the American system reflects the difficulty of getting the hands in actual poker. The two systems rate the hands' scores as follows:

Poker hand
American
point system
English
point system
Royal flush
100
30
Straight flush
75
30
Four of a kind
50
16
Full house
25
10
Flush
20
5
Straight
15
12
Three of a kind
10
6
Two pairs
5
3
One pair
2
1

The points scored from each hand are added to the total score. Albert H. Morehead and Geoffrey Mott-Smith suggest that to win one must score at least 200 points in the American system or 70 in the English system.[4] Because of the application of the point system, this solitaire is more prevalent as a computer game.

Variants

In the variation Poker Shuffle (also called Switch-a-roo Poker Solitaire or Open Poker Squares), cards played onto the grid can be moved until all 25 cards are set. Players can even choose to deal all 25 cards face-up before beginning placement. This gives more flexibility, and gives players the opportunity to produce higher scoring hands on the grid. Scoring is the same as Poker Squares, but under these rules a winning score is 120 points in the English system and 310 points in the American system.[5]

A two player variant can implemented by taking turns to play and comparing scores.[6]

See also

References
  1. "Poker Solitaire" (p.313) in Bicycle Official Rules of Card Games by Joli Quentin Kansil (ed.), 1999. ISBN 1-889752-06-1
  2. "Poker Solitaire" (p.210) in Hoyle's Rules of Games (3rd edition) by Philip D. Morehead (ed.), 2001. ISBN 0-451-20484-0
  3. "Poker Solitaire" (p.66-68) in The Little Book of Solitaire, Running Press, 2002. ISBN 0-7624-1381-6
  4. The Complete Book of Solitaire and Patience Games by Albert H. Morehead & Geoffrey Mott-Smith, ISBN 0-553-20621-4)
  5. 100 Best Solitaire Games by Sloane Lee & Gabriel Packard ISBN 9781580423830
  6. "Poker Squares" in 50 Card Games: 50 Popular Card Games for Hours of Fun. Igloo Books. 2018. p. 13. ISBN 9781784409852.
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