XIII

POKER PATIENCE (WITH ONE WHIST PACK)

THIS is often played competitively by more than one person, each being provided with a whist pack. The one who makes the highest score is, in such a case, the winner.

But it is also a very interesting variety of true Patience, when played by a single person; the difference from the ordinary run of Patience games being that a result of some kind is always certain, the object being to make as high a score as possible. In this it bears some analogy to Golf Patience (q.v.).

The cards are dealt, face upwards, one by one, in order from the top of the pack. Each card, after the first, must be laid down next to one already on the board, either vertically, horizontally, or diagonally. That is to say, it must be placed immediately above or below; to the right, or to the left, or corner to corner. The cards must be so arranged that eventually an oblong lay-out is formed, consisting of five rows of five cards in each row; this oblong will also display five (vertical) columns, of five cards in each column.

Each row and each column is then separately counted up, as a hand at Poker, and the object is to lay out the oblong, so that the total score of these ten hands, added together, shall be as large as possible. The score-table is as follows:

Theoretically, the highest score possible to be made is 230 (five straight flushes one way, and five fours the other way), but, in practice, anything over 100 is extremely unusual. The following lay-out (scoring 99) was secured by a Newcastle player, and has been published by Mr. C. V. Diehl:

In counting sequences, the ace may be reckoned either as next above a king, or as next below a deuce. It cannot, however, hold both these ranks in the same hand. Thus king, ace, 10, knave, queen is a sequence of five, and 5, ace, 2, 3, 4 is a sequence of five but king, ace, 2, 3, 4 is not a sequence of five.