Poker Solitaire
Twenty-five cards come out one at a time and you choose where each one goes on the 5×5 grid. At the end, 10 hands score: 5 rows and 5 columns.
Rather play the deal of the day, the same one for everybody? Play the daily solitaire →
Left 25
Every game has a deal number: the same number always gives the same cards in the same order, so you can challenge someone to beat your score on the exact same deal.
How to play
The game is called Poker Squares and it dates back to the 1930s. It's nothing like classic solitaire: you don't sort cards here, you place them. A card comes up, you pick a square, and that's where it stays.
The one rule that matters
You see each card only as you place it, never before. You don't know what's coming, so the whole game is a bet on how much you'll risk: hold a row open for a flush that may never arrive, or lock in the two pair you already have.
The 10 hands
Every row and every column is a 5-card poker hand, scored by the usual rules — the same evaluator the rest of bit.poker runs on. A row like this is a straight flush:
The points
There are two historic systems, and you can switch between them mid-game:
| Hand | American | British |
|---|---|---|
| Royal flush | 100 | 30 |
| Str. flush | 75 | 30 |
| Quads | 50 | 16 |
| Full house | 25 | 10 |
| Flush | 20 | 5 |
| Straight | 15 | 12 |
| Trips | 10 | 6 |
| Two pair | 5 | 3 |
| Pair | 2 | 1 |
Notice the oddity in the British system: a straight beats a flush, the other way round from real poker. That isn't a mistake. On a 5×5 grid you end up with flushes almost by accident, while lining up five consecutive ranks is brutally hard — the British system pays for what's actually difficult here. It's the one used for records; the American one is the popular choice.
One tip
Low, unconnected cards aren't junk — they're filler. Set aside a row or a column early on to dump whatever doesn't fit, and don't get caught with nowhere to put a 3 that does nothing for you.
Looking for the other one? Here's classic Klondike solitaire.
Fancy playing actual poker now?
Here the cards fall where they fall. In poker you're the one deciding: which hands to play, how much to bet, when to fold. That's trainable, and bit.poker is the gym — no real money, no betting.