CoolhandThe games · Coolhand Poker
Anaconda
Seven cards, three rounds of passing cards to your neighbors, cut to five, then turned over one at a time with offers after each. Also called pass the trash.
18+ · Nothing to win but the hand.
- Players
- 3 to 7
- Family
- Home Games
- App
- Coolhand Poker · iOS and Android, soon
How it goes
Everyone puts in an entry, a small stake into the pool, and takes seven cards face down. Then the handing on begins. Three times you hand cards to a neighbor: three cards, then two, then one, each time to a player one seat further along. Nobody looks at what arrives until everyone has handed on. After each round of handing on there's a round of offers: put tokens in the pool, match what someone else put in, or pass. When the handing on is over you cut down to five and lay them face down in an order you choose. Then you turn them over one at a time, with offers after each. The best five cards take the pool.
A good hand
Cards that build toward one big hand, while the cards you give away help nobody. Hand on the odd ones and keep the pairs and the suit. What arrives was somebody else's leftovers, so the hand you could make from your first seven is usually better than the one you finish with. Expect your neighbors to be no kinder to you than you are to them.
The usual mistake
Turning over your strongest card early. Once the handing on is done, the order you set your five cards in is the only secret you have left. Turn over the cards that tell the least first, and make the table pay to see the one that matters. A big card shown on the first turn tells everyone what you have and gains you nothing.
Played differently where you are?
Card games change from table to table, and we researched some of these games instead of playing them. If Anaconda goes differently where you play it, tell us. That's one of the things the closed beta is for.
The closed beta is by invitation. How to ask to join.