Anteroom

The back room of a gambling house: a lamp under a shade, worn felt, tarnished brass. Around the table sit people life has bent each in its own way. They are the ones playing for you. A poker hand becomes chips and a multiplier, and their product is your score. A pair gives little, a flush more. But hands do not win runs, jokers do: thirty-two rumpled people, each with a distortion and a rule of its own. One counts only hearts, one triggers face cards twice, one grows with every flush and by the eighth ante is out of control. Between blinds a counter opens. Tarots change your deck for good, planets raise the level of the hands themselves, vouchers stay to the end of the run. Eight antes, twenty-four blinds. Every third holds a boss with a ban of its own: a suit clamped shut, a discard taken away, the target doubled. 32 jokers, 17 tarots, 12 planets, 9 vouchers, 10 bosses. A tutorial and a hand reference for anyone new to poker. The deck is always the same. The run never is.