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- Cards and deal
- From a well-shuffled 52-card pack deal one card face down to each player and stack the rest face down. Look at your own card without showing it to anyone else. Before play, agree on a ranking order of suits. (I favour clubs beat hearts beat spades beats diamonds, but there are 23 other possibilities for you to choose from.)
- Object
- To finish with the best five-card Poker hand.
- Play
- Each player in turn takes the top card of the stack, adds it to their hand, and then plays any card face
down to the table. When all are ready the cards they played are turned up. Whoever played the highest-ranking card, or the
higher suit of equally high cards, has first choice of taking one of the other players' cards (but not their own). The person
whose card they took then takes one of the remaining cards (other than their own), and so on, till only two cards and players
remain. Whichever of them put out the higher or better card chooses whether they both swap cards or keep the ones they put out.
You then all draw a third card and add it to your hand. Play as before, with the player of the highest or best of them having the first choice of which other card to take, and nobody other than the last two being allowed to take the card they put out.
- Ending and winning
- Keep going till everyone has at least five cards and someone calls for a showdown, or until everyone has ten cards, when a showdown is compulsory. Everyone then reveals the best five-card Poker hand they can make from the cards they hold and the best hand wins
- For two cowpokes
- Initially deal an extra card to a dummy third hand. At each turn deal a new card face down to the dummy and when both live players have put out a card turn its latest card face up. Whichever of the two live players put out the higher or better card has a choice of which other card to take, and the other live player can take either of the two remaining.