Pile-Up Poker

About Pile-Up Poker

Pile-Up Poker is a Zach Gage design that went public on Puzzmo on 3 June 2024. It was cancelled partway through development and then brought back, and it tested well enough that Puzzmo skipped the usual subscriber-only early access and released it to everyone.

Each round you are dealt five cards. Four go onto a 4 by 4 grid and the fifth goes onto a discard pile. When the grid is full, each row and each column is scored as a poker hand, the four corner cards make one more hand worth double, and the discard pile can score as a hand too. Playing more scoring hands raises a multiplier on the total.

The deal is fixed for the date, so everyone faces the same cards and the score is a fair comparison on the leaderboards. The interest is in the trade-offs: a card that completes a flush in a row may ruin a straight in its column, and the discard pile gives you a place to stash cards you cannot use. Pile-Up Poker Pro, a variant with a bigger grid, more cards and a joker, also appears on Puzzmo's daily page.

You need to know the ranking of poker hands, but there is no betting and no opponent. It suits solitaire players and anyone who likes squeezing points out of a fixed set of cards.

How to play Pile-Up Poker

1. Open today's Pile-Up Poker on puzzmo.com or in the Puzzmo app.
2. Look at the five cards you are dealt.
3. Place four of them on the 4 by 4 grid and discard the fifth onto the pile.
4. Repeat until the grid is full, aiming for poker hands in every row, column and the four corners.
5. See each hand scored and compare your total with other players.

Screenshots

Tips

• Decide early which rows will be flushes and which columns will be pairs or straights; one card can serve both.
• Keep the corners in mind, since that hand counts double.
• Use the discard pile on purpose; a matching set in the pile scores too.
• Pairs and three of a kind are easier to finish than straights when the grid fills up.

Questions