Potting Shed Poker

At the bottom of the garden is a shed with a cracked window, a radio, stacks of seed trays and a pack of cards with fig-purple backs that has been there longer than anyone remembers. This is the game we play on its workbench: five cards, one draw.

How to play

Pick a stake of 5, 10, 25 or 50 Fig Coins and press Deal. Five cards land face up. Tap any card you want to keep and it is marked HELD; tap it again to let it go. Then press Draw. Every card you did not hold is replaced from the same deck, and your final hand is judged against the table above the cards.

A fresh, shuffled 52-card deck is used for every hand, so nothing carries over from one deal to the next.

Reading the pay table

The table above the cards shows what each hand pays, as a multiple of your stake. After the deal, the message tells you if you are already holding something that pays, and the finished hand is highlighted in the table.

Royal flush (ten to ace, all one suit): 250×
Straight flush 50× · Four of a kind 25×
Full house 9× · Flush 6× · Straight 4×
Three of a kind 3× · Two pair 2×
A pair of jacks, queens, kings or aces 1×, which hands your stake back.

This is the full 9/6 Jacks or Better table: nine times your stake for a full house, six for a flush. A pair of tens or lower does not pay. That is the “Jacks or Better” in the name.

Rounds and Fig Coins

Your stake leaves your balance on the deal, and the draw costs nothing extra. If the final hand pays, the Fig Coins are added straight away and the message under the table says what you made.

Short of coins? The refill button at the top takes you back to 5,000. Fig Coins have no cash value and cannot be bought, exchanged or withdrawn.

From the garden notebook

Nobody plays cards in the potting shed for anything more than the right to choose the radio station. That was the spirit we wanted: a slow game with a little thought in it, played with a mug of tea going cold on the windowsill.

We drew the cards in cream and plum, gave them a fig-leaf back with a honey border, and left the rest to the shuffle.

Questions about Potting Shed Poker

Which cards should I hold?

That is the game: keep the cards you like the look of. Holding a hand that already pays keeps it safe, and anything else is a judgement call. There is no secret method, and no choice changes how the deck was shuffled.

Is it the same deck every time?

Each hand gets its own fresh 52-card deck, shuffled by your browser. Cards from one hand have no bearing on the next.

What does a pair of tens pay?

Nothing, I’m afraid. Pairs only pay from jacks upwards: jacks, queens, kings and aces.