How to play
Hoggenheimer was sold in the early 1900s as “English roulette”, though it has no wheel at all. It uses a short pack of 32 cards, the 7 through the Ace in each suit, plus one joker. What makes it unusual is that a single shuffle decides everything: once the cards are down, the round plays itself out like a chain reaction.
You begin with 1,000 virtual credits.
- Choose a chip (20, 100, 200 or 1,000) and tap the spots you want to back. A spot holds 20 to 1,000 credits in multiples of 20; the whole layout is capped at 5,000.
- Undo removes your last chip, Clear wipes the board, Rebet repeats the previous round’s bets.
- Press Deal.
The 33 cards are shuffled. Thirty-two go face down into a grid of four rows and eight columns. Each row belongs to a suit (clubs, diamonds, hearts, spades) and each column to a rank (7, 8, 9, 10, J, Q, K, A), so every card has exactly one home square. The 33rd card stays in the dealer’s hand.
Now the chain starts. The hand card is turned up. If it’s the joker, the round ends on the spot. If not, it’s placed face up in its own home square, and the face-down card that was lying there is lifted and turned next. That card goes to its home, the card underneath that is turned, and so on. The moment the joker is lifted, everything stops.
Bets and payouts
Every bet except one says “this whole group of cards will be face up before the joker shows”.
| Bet | Cards in group | Chance | Pays | Return |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A rank column (7, 8 … A) | 4 | 1 in 5 | 3.75 to 1 | 95.00% |
| A suit row (♣ ♦ ♥ ♠) | 8 | 1 in 9 | 7.5 to 1 | 94.44% |
| Red or Black | 16 | 1 in 17 | 15 to 1 | 94.12% |
| All 32 | 32 | 1 in 33 | 30.25 to 1 | 94.70% |
| Joker first | none | 1 in 33 | 30 to 1 | 93.94% |
Joker first is the odd one out: it wins only if the dealer’s hand card is the joker and not a single card gets turned.
Why the odds are so tidy
The rule behind every number in that table is short: a group of k cards is completely turned before the joker exactly once in k + 1 rounds.
Here’s why. Follow the chain from the hand card: each card points to its home square, and that square holds the next card. In a random shuffle this path is one loop of a random arrangement of the 33 cards, and the joker is what closes it. Two facts about random loops do the rest. The loop is equally likely to have any length from 0 to 32 turned cards, and among the joker and the k cards you care about, each is equally likely to be the one reached last. Your group is complete exactly when the joker is last of those k + 1, so the chance is 1/(k + 1).
The payouts were then set at about 95% of fair odds, rounded down to the nearest quarter, which is why the returns differ slightly between rows.
One consequence: on average 16 cards are turned, but a round with 3 cards is just as likely as a round with 30. The length is flat, not bell-shaped.
Strategy
Nothing you do after pressing Deal matters, so the decisions are all about which bets to stack together.
- The columns lose the least. At 95% they’re the best value on the board, and they hit one round in five, so they also keep your balance steadier than anything else.
- Bets nest inside each other. If Red completes, then diamonds and hearts have both completed too. If All 32 hits, every row, column and colour wins with it. Backing Red together with a red suit row isn’t a hedge; they tend to win together.
- Mixing a row and a column has a clean answer. The jack column and the spade row share one card, so together they cover 11 different cards; both complete in the same round 1 time in 12.
- Joker first is the opposite of everything else. It wins only when nothing else can. As a hedge it’s the worst-paying spot on the table, at 93.94%.
The house edge sits between 5% and just over 6% depending on the spot. No combination of bets beats it; spreading chips only changes how often you see something win.
If you enjoy old banking games where the dealer’s cards decide everything, Faro and Lansquenet come from the same era.
If you enjoy Hoggenheimer, try Hold and Nudge or Hold’em Duel next.
