The Passing Game
Tonight's table: Earl 🎩 · Pearl 🌹 · Sal 🥃 · Dot 👓 · Vern 🚬 · Marge 💋
a real deck · every seat plays the table AI · badges mark the owner
Every card starts one color — its owner's. Passing k cards moves them k seats around the circle; a card kept in a hand moves 0 that round. So a card's total journey is the sum of whichever pass rounds it rides. It lands back with its original owner exactly when that total is a whole number of laps — a multiple of the number of players.
Some vocabulary. A throw is the moment you discard a card. A ride is any later holder passing that same card onward. Each ride in the k-card round moves the card k seats, so a card's journey = its throw + whichever rides it catches. It walks back into your hand exactly when its journey is a whole number of laps — a multiple of the table size.
The rounds run 4 → 3 → 2 → 1, once each. A card you throw in the 4-round can then ride any combination of the 3-, 2- and 1-rounds: journeys 4 through 10. Thrown in the 3-round: journeys 3–6. The 2-round: 2 or 3. The 1-round: exactly 1, always. Which journeys make full laps?
7 players — only a journey of 7 works (10 < 14). Two routes, both starting from a
4-round throw: 4+3 — the player you dump four on flings one straight back next round —
and 4+2+1. Anything you throw after the 4-round can never return: its longest
possible journey is 6.
6 players — needs a journey of 6. Two routes: 4+2 and 3+2+1, both
requiring the card to skip specific rounds. The offsets barely line up: six seats has the
freshest circulation.
5 players — needs 5 or 10. Three routes: 4+1, 3+2, and the show-stopper
4+3+2+1 = 10, exactly two laps. Five is the only table where a card ridden in
every single round comes home — and riding every round is exactly what happens to a
card nobody wants.
Passing k seats at a table of n is a self-pass — everyone hands the cards straight back to themselves, a void round — whenever n divides k. The offsets are 1, 2, 3, 4, and five is the smallest table size that divides none of them: every smaller table voids at least one round. So all four rounds are real exactly from five up — the floor is a theorem, not a taste. The ceiling is the deck: 7×7 deals 49 of the 52; an eighth player would need 56. (Six carries one quirk: 3+3 = 6, so the 3-round is a simultaneous three-card swap with the seat directly opposite.)
Each round you give to seat +k and receive from seat −k. At five players the offsets pair into full laps — 4+1 = 5 and 3+2 = 5 — so every channel reverses: in round 3 you feed seat +3 while seat +2 feeds you, and in the very next round the arrows flip — you feed +2 and +3 feeds you, possibly with the same cards. With four opponents and four passes, everyone is both your giver and your receiver; there are no one-way streets. At 7, seats +1/+2 only ever take from you and +5/+6 only ever give — that downstream anonymity is why a full table feels like a river and five feels like table tennis.
You receive from seat −k in round k. At 5 players that's seats +1, +2, +3, +4 — every opponent hands you cards. At 6 and 7, one or two players never pass to you at all. So short tables show you a much bigger share of the live deck: strong card-reading, weak hate-drafting (your trash comes home).
Run chance vs strategy above and you'll see that under purely random passing, 7 players actually boomerangs most (~1.1 cards home per player): the 4+3 pipeline is fat — you discard 4 of your 7, and each has about a 3-in-10 chance of being flung straight back. But passing is really a filtering game — everyone keeps gems and sheds junk — and that changes the odds completely. Measured over hundreds of hands with the table AIs: a discarded wild has a 0% chance of coming home at any size (the first hand it touches absorbs it), while junk boomerangs at 1-in-6 at 5 players, 1-in-12 at 6, and 1-in-8 at 7. Filtering flips the ordering: junk rides every round, and five seats is where riding every round is a perfect two-lap trip home. The deck sorts itself — gems sink, trash floats, and the table size decides where the trash washes up.
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5–7 players · seven cards · everyone blinds 5
Same colors add to 8 · different colors subtract to 8. Combining is always optional — you can keep the raw cards instead.
Four rounds, everyone at once: 4 cards four seats on, then 3, then 2, then 1 to your neighbor. What arrives is what the sender didn't want — or a trap.
After the passing, everyone secretly sets a flip order for their seven cards. Then six streets: each starts with every live hand turning one card face-up — six up by the end, one stays buried. A betting round follows each reveal: raises move in 10s, capped at 25 per player per street. No check-raises — once you check, you can only call or fold that street; a bettor who gets raised may re-raise. First word rotates left each street.
Chips hidden in a fist, opened at once. Going both must win both sides outright — tie or lose either one and you're the pig: you take nothing.
A-2-3-4-6 can never lose the low — only split it. Straights and flushes count against a low; the ace always plays low there. High half and Low half split the pot in unbroken 5s; the odd 5-chip goes to High.
7s, 8s & 9s — the passing game
7s, 8s & 9s was invented at the table by the Tuesday Night Poker Guys, who hold all bragging rights in perpetuity. Stolen shamelessly — and lovingly digitized — by Jesse Do, credited thief of record.
Card faces adapted — recolored for this table, artwork untouched — from the open-source deck:
Vectorized Playing Cards 3.2
totalnonsense.com/open-source-vector-playing-cards
Copyright 2011,2024 – Chris Aguilar – conjurenation@gmail.com
Licensed under: LGPL 3.0
The rules simulator, wild-card evaluator, and the table personalities were built for this project.
Every player at the table runs one of these — assign them to anyone in Customize the table. They all play their cards on the merits; the personality is the lean.
🔜 Multiplayer — play against the actual Tuesday Night Poker Guys, not just their robot understudies — plus the rest of the house poker games, all at one table.