Pot Crush

Pot Crush is a card game where you are trying to hold as little as possible.

You get six cards, face down in a two-by-three board, and you reveal two of them. On your turn you flip one of your own, take the top of the discard pile, or turn over the deck and decide whether to keep it. Low cards are good, a 2 is worth minus two, and a King is worth nothing at all. The round ends the moment all six of anybody's cards are face up - so ending it early is a bet that you are already ahead.

What makes it its own game is that combinations depend on where the cards sit. A pair has to share a column. A straight or three of a kind has to run across a row. A flush or four of a kind has to fill a two-by-two block. So every card you take is two decisions: whether to keep it, and where to put it.

Below zero:

Straight, -5

Flush, -10

Straight flush, -15

Three of a kind, -20

Four of a kind, -40

Jackpot - all six cards one suit, -60

Pot Crush - all six one suit AND in sequence, -100

The Pot Crush is the rare one the game is named after. When it lands the table stops and puts on a show for it.

You can also throw a Jack, Queen, King or Ace away to use its power - peek at a card, peek at a rival's, or swap one of yours with theirs. Win rounds to collect pearls and diamonds, and every five diamonds earns a crown that changes the rules: a wild Joker once a round, a free face-card power, a second opponent, or the pick of the whole discard pile.

Plays in the browser on a phone or a computer, in English or Chinese. There is nothing to install and no account, and after the first visit it works offline.

You can also play Pot Crush at playpotcrush.com, and the full rules - every combination and what each card costs - are at How to play Pot Crush.

A Windows desktop build is attached below.