Poker Squares
How to play Poker Squares
Poker hands meet solitaire: one deck, one grid, ten hands at once.
- Cards are dealt one at a time — you always see the card you must place (and in free play, one more on deck).
- Click any empty cell to place it. Placements are permanent: no swaps, no undo. Every card is a real decision.
- After 25 cards the grid is full and all ten lines score as poker hands — five rows and five columns, each read as a five-card hand. Your score is the total of all ten.
Badges along the grid edge show what each line has made so far, so you can watch the score build as you place.
Scoring: American vs. English
We use American scoring, which keeps poker's familiar rarity order and pays big for the big hands. English scoring instead rates each hand by how hard it is to build in this game — note its straight (12) outranking its flush (5), since suit-columns make flushes routine:
| Hand | American (used here) | English |
|---|---|---|
| Royal flush | 100 | 30 |
| Straight flush | 75 | 30 |
| Four of a kind | 50 | 16 |
| Full house | 25 | 10 |
| Flush | 20 | 5 |
| Straight | 15 | 12 |
| Three of a kind | 10 | 6 |
| Two pair | 5 | 3 |
| One pair | 2 | 1 |
Aces play high or low in straights (A-2-3-4-5 and 10-J-Q-K-A both count), but straights never wrap around the corner — Q-K-A-2-3 is nothing.
Your final score also lands a rank named after the poker hands themselves, from High Card up to Royal Flush (150+). Reaching a Straight — 60 points — counts as a win.
Keyboard controls
Fully playable without the mouse: arrow keys or HJKL move the cursor between empty cells, Enter or Space places the card there. The cursor only rests on empty cells, so Enter always means "place here" — and since placements are permanent, nothing repeats or auto-places. When the grid is full, Enter starts a new deal.
Tips
- Columns collect suits, rows collect ranks. The classic plan: dedicate a column to each suit and chase flushes (20 apiece), while pairs and sets accumulate naturally across the rows.
- Keep a dump line. Reserve the fifth column (or an awkward row) for cards that fit nowhere — one sacrificed line costs less than poisoning three good ones.
- Straights are for the brave. At 15 points they pay less than flushes and break far more easily; commit to one only when the middle cards arrive early.
- Watch both lines. Every cell belongs to a row and a column — the best placements improve one line without wrecking the other.
- Late game is damage control. The last five cards rarely help; know before they arrive which lines you're protecting and which are already lost.
The daily grid
Switch to Daily mode and everyone places the identical 25-card sequence — same fate, different choices, so score comparisons are pure placement skill. The daily is strict classic: no peek at the on-deck card. Finish and copy a spoiler-free result to share. And like everything here, it passes the alt-tab test: the game saves after every placement, so you can leave mid-grid when your build finishes and pick it back up whenever.
Frequently asked questions
What is Poker Squares?
Poker Squares (also called Poker Solitaire or Poker Patience) is a 1930s public-domain card game. 25 cards are dealt one at a time; you place each into a 5×5 grid, and once placed a card never moves. When the grid is full, all ten lines — five rows and five columns — score as five-card poker hands, and your score is the total.
What's a good score in Poker Squares?
Under American scoring, 70–120 is a good game. Random placement averages around 14 points; simply reacting to pairs gets you near 50; a real plan — flush-hunting in columns while pairing up rows — averages around 80, and 120+ is an excellent day. Reaching 60 counts as a win here.
What's the difference between American and English scoring?
American scoring follows poker's familiar rarity order — a flush (20) beats a straight (15) — and the monster hands pay big: 50 for four of a kind, 75 for a straight flush, 100 for a royal. English scoring instead pays by how hard each hand is to build in this game: the straight (12) far outranks the flush (5), because dedicating columns to suits makes flushes routine while straights break easily. We use American: bigger swings, and chasing the big hand stays worth the risk.
Do my placements change which cards come up?
No. The 25-card sequence is fixed by the deal before your first placement, so your choices only decide where cards go, never what comes next. That's what makes the Daily Grid a fair contest: everyone faces the identical sequence, and the score gap is pure placement skill.
Is every player's Daily Grid the same?
Yes — the daily number seeds the deal, so all players place the exact same 25 cards in the same order. In the daily there's no peek at the next card, for fair comparison; in free play you can see one card ahead.
More games
- Klondike Solitaire — The classic solitaire — with every deal guaranteed winnable. Unlimited undo, no timer, and a shared Daily Deal.
- Golf Solitaire — Clear seven columns onto the waste, one rank up or down — aces wrap to kings. Every deal winnable, unlimited undo, and a shared Daily Golf.
- Five Dice — Three rolls, thirteen boxes — the classic push-your-luck dice sheet with live score previews and a shared Daily Dice.