How to play
Poker Squares is a solitaire puzzle built from poker hands. A 52-card deck is shuffled and 25 cards come up one at a time. Each card has to go somewhere before you see the next one.
- The next card is shown next to the grid, with how many are left.
- Tap any empty square to put the card there. Once placed, a card stays put: there is no moving, swapping or undo.
- When a row or a column is full, it is scored at once as a five-card poker hand: the score appears at the end of the row or under the column.
- After the 25th card all 10 hands (5 rows and 5 columns) are scored, and the total is your result.
Every card counts twice, once in its row and once in its column. Aces are high or low in a straight (A-2-3-4-5 and 10-J-Q-K-A), but a straight can’t wrap around (Q-K-A-2-3 is nothing).
Your game is saved as you play, so you can close the page and pick up where you left off. The best score is kept separately for each scoring system.
Scoring
There are two traditional tables. Pick one with the American / English button; the change applies right away if no card is down yet, otherwise from your next game. Scores shows both tables during play.
| Hand | American | English |
|---|---|---|
| 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 pair | 5 | 3 |
| Pair | 2 | 1 |
The big difference: in the American table a flush (20) beats a straight (15), while the English table pays a straight (12) much more than a flush (5), because a flush is easy to build in a column you reserve for one suit.
A game counts as won at 200 points with American scoring or 70 with English. Those are the traditional winning marks given in Morehead and Mott-Smith’s card game books, and they are hard to reach: our computer player, placing each card by a simple rule, averages 94 American and 40 English points and reaches 200 in fewer than 1 game in 100.
Strategy
- Give rows and columns different jobs. A common plan is to collect the same ranks in rows (pairs, three of a kind, full houses) and the same suit in columns (flushes). One card can then help both.
- Keep a discard row. Sooner or later a card fits nowhere. Choosing one row (or column) early as the place for those cards protects the others.
- Flushes are cheap in the American table. With 20 points each, one suit per column is a strong plan there. Under English scoring they are worth only 5, and straights and pairs matter more.
- Count what’s still to come. Only 25 of the 52 cards appear, so waiting for one exact card to finish a straight flush rarely pays. Open-ended straights and groups that several ranks can complete are safer.
- Fill the last squares carefully. Near the end, look at both the row and the column of each empty square: a card that finishes a full house in a row might ruin a flush in its column.
If you enjoy Poker Squares, try President or Pyramid Solitaire next.
