How to play Pot Crush
Pot Crush is a card game for one player against the bots, played with a standard deck plus jokers. You hold six cards, most of them face down, and you are trying to end the round holding as little as possible. Low cards are good, high cards hurt, and the right combination can drag your total well below zero.
It sits in the same family as Golf and Thirty-One, but the scoring is its own: eight combinations, four cards you can throw away for a power, and five crowns that change the rules as you earn them. A whole round takes two or three minutes.
Play Pot Crushfree in your browser - no downloadSetup
Each player is dealt six cards face down, in two rows of three. Before the first turn you reveal any two of yours. The top card of the deck is turned over to start the discard pile, and the rest stays as the deck.
You can see two of your own six, and two of every rival's. The other four are a guess, yours included, until somebody flips them.
A turn - one of these three
- Flip - turn one of your own face-down cards face up. You keep whatever it turns out to be, so this is the gamble: it might be a 2, it might be a Queen.
- Take - take the top card of the discard pile and swap it into your hand. The card you swap out goes face up onto the pile, where everyone can see it and the next player may take it.
- Turn over - turn over the deck's top card, then either keep it (swapping it into your hand) or throw it straight onto the discard pile.
A swapped-in card always lands face up. That is the tension in the game: every swap improves your hand and moves the round one card closer to ending.
What each card costs
| A | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | J | Q | K |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | -2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 10 | 10 | 0 |
Two points worth remembering: the 2 is worth minus two, the best single card in the deck, and the King is worth nothing. A King is not a card to throw away - it is a free slot. The Jack, Queen and 10 are the expensive ones at ten apiece.
Ending the round
The round ends the moment all six of any player's cards are face up. Everyone then reveals what they were hiding and the totals are compared. The lowest total wins the round.
So ending it is a weapon. If you think you are ahead, flipping your last card closes the round before a rival can improve - and if you are wrong about what they are holding, you have handed them the win.
Combinations - and why position matters
This is what makes Pot Crush its own game rather than a Golf variant. Your six cards are not a hand you hold - they sit in a fixed two-by-three board, and a combination only counts if the cards are in the right shape on that board.
A row is 1‑2‑3 or 4‑5‑6. A column is 1‑4, 2‑5 or 3‑6. A block is a two-by-two square: 1‑2‑4‑5 or 2‑3‑5‑6.
Three of a kind has to be three-in-a-row. Four of a kind has to fill a block. A pair must share a column. So where you put a card is as much of a decision as which card you keep - and the King's swap can wreck a rival's shape as easily as it raises their total.
| Combination | Shape | What it is | Example | Points |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pair | column | Two of the same rank, one above the other | 3♦ 3♥ | 0 |
| Straight | row | Three consecutive ranks, any suits | 7♣ 8♦ 9♥ | -5 |
| Flush | block | Four of one suit in a two-by-two square | 3♥ 5♥ J♥ K♥ | -10 |
| Straight flush | row | A row that is a straight and all one suit | 5♦ 6♦ 7♦ | -15 |
| Three of a kind | row | Three of the same rank across a row | 5♠ 5♣ 5♦ | -20 |
| Four of a kind | block | All four of one rank in a square | 7♠ 7♥ 7♦ 7♣ | -40 |
| Jackpot | all six | Every card on your board in one suit | 2♥ 3♥ 7♥ Q♥ A♥ 6♥ | -60 |
| Pot Crush | all six | All six in one suit and in sequence | 4♠ 5♠ 6♠ 7♠ 8♠ 9♠ | -100 |
| Joker | anywhere | Wild in any combination, but costs points | ★ | +10 |
A combination replaces the face value of the cards it covers, and each card can belong to only one. When several readings of your board are possible the game searches them all and keeps the cheapest, so you never lose points by having too much going on.
In a straight the Ace plays at either end - A‑2‑3 and Q‑K‑A both count - but a run never wraps around, so K‑A‑2 is nothing. Combinations start counting once you earn your first diamond; before that the game is played on card values alone.
The Pot Crush
All six cards, one suit, an unbroken run - a six-card straight flush, worth minus 100. It is the rarest thing in the game and the hand it is named after. When one lands, the round stops and the table puts on a show for it.
Powers - throwing a face card away
Instead of keeping a Jack, Queen, King or Ace, you can throw it away to use its power. That costs you the card but buys you information or a swap:
- J - peek at one of your own face-down cards
- Q - peek at one of a rival's
- K - swap one of your cards with a rival's
- A - swap two of your own
The King's swap is the sharp one: you can hand a rival a Queen and take whatever they were protecting.
Pearls, diamonds and crowns
Winning rounds earns pearls, pearls become diamonds, and every five diamonds earns a crown. The crowns arrive in a fixed order and each one changes the game:
- Joker - place a Joker on a card, once a round
- Knight - use one J Q K A power without giving up the card, once a round
- Empire - a second opponent, switchable in Settings
- Revenger - take any card from the pile, not just the top, once a round
- Eternal - the adventure is complete
A few things that help
Keep Kings, dump tens
A King is a zero. A 10, Jack or Queen is ten points of dead weight - those are the cards to swap out first, and the ones to hand a rival with the King's power.
Build shapes, not just low cards
Four cards of one suit in a square is minus ten before a single card value is counted, and it does not care whether those cards are twos or Queens. If three corners of a block already share a suit, filling the fourth is usually worth more than shaving a couple of points off some other slot.
Watch what the bots throw
A card that goes onto the pile instead of into a hand tells you what that player does not need. The expert bot reads your discards the same way.
Ending early is a bet
Flipping your last card ends the round for everyone. Do it when you are clearly ahead on what is visible - not when a rival still has four face-down cards and a suit going.
Where to play
Pot Crush runs in any browser at playpotcrush.com - free, no account, no download. After your first visit it keeps an offline copy, so it opens without a signal.
On an iPhone, open it in Safari, tap Share then Add to Home Screen, and it behaves like an app. On Android, use Chrome's menu and Add to Home screen. There is a Windows desktop build as well, and the game is playable in English and Chinese.
Common questions
Is Pot Crush free?
Yes - free, with no account and nothing to install.
Can I play without internet?
Yes, after the first visit. The game stores itself in your browser.
What is the best possible hand?
The Pot Crush: all six cards in one suit and in sequence, for minus 100.
How many players?
One bot to start with; a second can be switched on in Settings once the Empire crown is earned.
Play Pot Crushfree in your browser - no download