Score
0
Best
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Twenty-five cards, one at a time, into a five by five grid. Every row and every column is scored as a poker hand.
Twenty five cards come off a shuffled deck one at a time. The card on top is shown beside the grid, and you tap any empty square of the five by five grid to put it there. Once a card is down it cannot be moved, and you never see what is coming next.
When the grid is full, each of the five rows and each of the five columns is scored as an ordinary five card poker hand, so ten hands in all. A royal flush is worth 100, a straight flush 75, four of a kind 50, a full house 25, a flush 20, a straight 15, three of a kind 10, two pair 5 and a pair 2. A line with nothing in it scores nothing. An ace can sit at either end of a straight, high above the king or low below the two.
Every square belongs to one row and one column, so each card you place is a bet on two hands at the same time. A line is scored the instant its fifth card goes in, the number appears at the end of that row or under that column, and your score is the total of all ten lines. Only twenty five of the fifty two cards are ever dealt, which means the card you are waiting for may simply never come.
Decide early what each line is for. The strongest simple plan is to reserve some columns for flushes, one suit per column, and use the rows for pairs and sets. Because every card lands in one of each, a heart dropped into the hearts column is also a free card for whatever row it crosses. Players who place every card on its own merits end up with ten half-built hands and score almost nothing.
Full houses and four of a kind are worth far more than their odds suggest in this game, because a row can collect matching ranks across the whole deal. Give same ranks a home in the same row. A row holding two pairs is already worth five, and any third card of either rank turns it into a full house worth twenty five. Flushes are the other steady earner, because a column only needs five cards of one suit out of the thirteen that exist.
Straights are the trap. They need five consecutive ranks with no duplicates, so one wrong card spoils the line completely and it cannot be repaired. Aim for straights only in a line you have already accepted as a dump, where any leftover card can go without costing you anything. Keep at least one such dump line open for as long as possible; it is where awkward cards go.
The last few placements decide the score. With five or six cards left, count the empty squares and ask which lines can still finish as something. A line that has already failed should take every card that does not help elsewhere. Only twenty five cards are dealt, so a gutshot that needs one exact card is usually not worth holding a square open for.