Goal: Last player standing. The lowest hand total is eliminated each round, until one player remains and takes the pot.

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Standard Rules

1. Setup: Everyone antes stars into the pot and draws 5 cards.
2. Rounds: Four or more players play 3 rounds. Three players play 2. Two players duel, which is covered below.
3. Commit phase: Choose your cards in secret. Everyone reveals at once. You must keep enough cards in hand to cover every round still to come.
4. Final round: Whatever is left in your hand goes down. Nothing is held back.
5. Scoring: Ranks 2 through 10 count at face value. Aces count 11. The lowest total loses the round and the seat.
6. Sudden Death: Tied players each draw 3 hidden options and pick 1 at the same time. Lowest card drawn loses. Repeat until one loser is left.
7. Winner: The last player alive takes the pot. In the final round the highest total wins, and a tie goes to Sudden Death.
8. Bankroll: Stars persist across games in the same room. What you leave the table with is what you sit down with next time.

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Two at the Table

Sit down against a single opponent and the hand becomes a duel, best of 3. One deal of 5 cards, played across 3 rounds. Each round has a loser. The first to lose two rounds loses the duel and the pot. Reach the third round with the losses split and that round settles it.

Nobody leaves their chair partway through. You lose rounds, not your seat, and the stars only move once the duel is decided. You still have to leave yourself cards for the rounds ahead, so a duel is three decisions, not one.

Best of 3 is the honour standard on the Circuit. A single round is a street bet, and it is not settled here.

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Game Modes

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Hosting a Table

Open a room and it is yours. A Table button appears in the header for the host alone, and everything below lives behind it. Changes to the ante, the stars, and the mode land when the next game starts, never mid hand.

If you drop, the room hands the table to a connected player rather than stalling. It comes back to you when you return, provided nobody but bots has taken it up.

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Losing Your Connection

Your chair is tied to the room name and to this browser. Come back to the same room and you land in the seat you left, with the stars you left in it. The table holds that seat for a day, and rooms are cleared nightly.

The table does not wait on you. Drop mid hand and your cards are committed on your behalf after ten seconds, and a Sudden Death pick is made for you after twelve. You are marked away in the meantime rather than removed.

Reconnecting is usually automatic: the game retries on its own when the network comes back or when you return to the tab. Rooms remembers where you have played, so rejoining by hand is a tap. A campaign picks up at the stop you were on, even after a refresh.

Clearing site data cuts you loose from the seat, and from your circuit progress with it.

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Keyboard Shortcuts

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The Gambit Circuit

A solo run across five stops in the Frontier. At each one you sit down against a fixed table, and every city keeps its own rules. You must eliminate every opponent to move on.

Stars carry forward between stops, so a strong run compounds. A bad stop sets you back without ending you. Go broke and Sasquatch Sam finds you first, for a duel over his purse: win it and you get another shot at the table, lose it and the circuit resets.

Progress and stars are saved in this browser alone.

The music of the Circuit and the sounds of the table, with thanks to the people who made them. Every piece is used under the license noted beside it. Track titles link to the original; the license line links to its terms.

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Music

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Sound

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Tracks were level matched for the table so no piece arrives louder than the last. Original files are unmodified apart from that and, where noted, a trim for a clean loop.