Slipdeck

A shoe deals one card at a time onto the felt. Flick it left and it drops down the chute; flick it right and it slides into the hand waiting at the bottom of the table. Five keeps fill that hand and it is paid as poker there and then — a pair or better cashes, and the chain multiplier climbs for as long as you keep cashing, so a run of clean hands is worth far more than the cards in them. Neither answer is free. Keeping a card that helps nothing drags the hand toward HIGH CARD, which busts it and costs a life; binning eats one of only three discards you get per hand, and the flick that overflows the chute costs a life too. So the squeeze comes from both sides: five slots to fill, eight cards to fill them with. On top of it every card burns on a fuse that gets shorter as the round runs, and a card left unsorted is a life gone. The table tells you the truth while you decide — the chip under the card names what keeping it would make, down to FLUSH DRAW, DEAD CARD or BUST.

A Newrare game — more at Newrare.