Poch

How to play poch

The rules

• Poch is a German card game for four, played in Nuremberg in the 1500s. You need a pack of 32 cards — ace, king, queen, jack, ten, nine, eight and seven in each suit — chips, and a board with eight bowls: ace, king, queen, jack, ten, marriage, sequence and poch. In each suit the cards run upwards 7, 8, 9, 10, jack, queen, king, ace.
• Before every deal each player puts one chip in each of the eight bowls. The dealer gives everyone eight cards, and the suit of the last card the dealer deals to themselves is trumps. The deal passes to the left.
• A deal has three parts. First, the bowls: whoever holds the ace, king, queen, jack or ten of trumps takes the bowl of that name. Whoever holds both the king and queen of trumps also takes the marriage bowl, and whoever holds the 7, 8 and 9 of trumps takes the sequence bowl. A bowl nobody wins stays where it is and grows with the next deal's stakes.
• Second, the poch bowl. The player to the dealer's left bets one or two chips into it. Going round, each of the others puts in the same to stay in, or passes. Then the first player may raise once, by one or two chips, and the others meet the raise or pass. Passing only gives up the poch bowl: you still play the race.
• Those still in compare their best set of cards of the same rank. More cards beat fewer: four of a kind beats three, three beat a pair, and a pair beats a single card. With the same number, the higher rank wins; with the same rank, the set holding a trump. If it is still level, the player nearest the dealer's left wins. The winner takes the poch bowl; a player left alone takes it without showing.
• Third, the race. The winner of the poch bowl leads any card. Whoever holds the next card up in the same suit must lay it — there is no order round the table — and so on up the suit. An ace is a stop, and so is a card whose next card has already been played: whoever laid it leads any card they like.
• The first player to lay all their cards wins the race, and each of the others pays them one chip for every card still in their hand.
• The game ends when a player does not have the eight chips to stake a new deal. The player with the most chips wins.

In this version

• You play with three computer players, West, North and East, and everyone starts with 40 chips.
• In the race the app lays the card you must lay when you tap it.
• A player who cannot pay in full for the cards left in hand pays what they have.
• The computer players bet by the strength of their hand, with a little chance mixed in, and lead the card that starts their longest run in a suit.