Poker Carré 2011

In Poker Carré, players add cards to a grid and try to create sequences of at least four numbers (e.g., 1-2-3-4), sets of at least three cards of the same suit, and sets of at least three cards of the same value.

Why is this difficult? The deck consists of 49 cards – seven suits of seven cards numbered 1-7 – and each player starts with a hand of four cards, while nine cards are randomly laid out in a 3x3 grid. On a turn, a player adds a card to the grid adjacent to at least one card already on the table, with the restriction that at least one of the adjacent cards must have a value exactly one higher or one lower than the card being played. That player then draws a replacement card. Once all the cards have been played, tally the points; the player with the highest score wins.