The Gang

The Gang turns Texas Hold 'em Poker into a cooperative game. It's a great idea. Most of the cards in the game are just standard poker cards. Unknowing passers by will probably think you are just playing regular poker. 

Your goal as a team is to guess the order of your hands based on strength. You need to guess who has the strongest hand, then the second strongest, and so on. You need to do this right three times to win the game. If you fail for a third time, you lose. At the start of a round, everyone draws two cards. These are never shown to your teammates, and you may not discuss them at all. From these two cards, you already need to start guessing who will have the strongest poker hand. Depending on where you think you will rank among all hands, you pick a white poker chip with the appropriate number of stars. More stars means stronger. If you already have a pair, you'd probably pick the chip with the most stars. If you have a lousy 2 and 7, you'd probably pick the chip with just one star. Everyone must take a chip eventually, and you need to coordinate this without discussing your cards at all. Once everyone is happy, you move on to the next stage. 

Now you reveal three cards at the centre of the table. You look at your own two cards and see what kind of combo they can form with the three shared cards. You need to do the ranking again, this time using yellow poker chips. Since you have new information, your ranking may already differ from the first stage. 

In the next stage, you reveal a fourth shared card. You must always use the two cards in hand to form your combo, but now you have four cards in the common pool from which to pick three. You do the ranking for a third time. Finally, a fifth card will be revealed, and you do one last ranking before checking whether you win the round. Only the final ranking will be considered to see whether you win. The first three stages are for your reference, to help you decide how to do the ranking in the final stage. If you get the order right, you win the round. 

Every round you will do ranking four times

You do need to know a bit about poker to be able to play The Gang. You need some idea of how rare the various combos are. I learned that sometimes even just a pair can be pretty strong. If you get a straight, or a flush, you can probably confidently declare yourself the strongest. Every round you go through four stages. Any change in ranking between the stages is an important clue. For example when the fourth shared card is revealed and it is a 7, and I happen to have a single 7 in hand, this gives me a pair, which can make me change my mind about my ranking. I might go from weakest to strongest or second strongest. The key information here for my teammates is a 7 making me change my mind. Throughout the game players may not exchange any information about their cards. When players have different ideas about how strong a combo is, it can be dangerous. You may need to fail a few times for everyone to become aligned about how strong certain combos are. 

This is a creative concept for a game. Texas Hold 'em is a game many people are already familiar with. The Gang might be a good opportunity to introduce non-gamers to the boardgame hobby. The game is for 3 to 6, but I suspect the game will be more fun with more players, because it is more challenging. I love a challenge! 

We failed three times and lost the game.