The Gang takes the familiar game of Texas Hold ’em Poker and turns it into a cooperative experience. It is a very clever idea. Most of the cards used in the game are standard poker cards. If someone walked by while you were playing, they would likely think you were just playing a regular game of poker.
Your objective as a group is to correctly guess the order of your hands based on how strong they are. You need to figure out who has the best hand, followed by the second best, and so on. You must get this order right three separate times to win the game. However, if you fail to get the order correct for the third time, you lose the game entirely. At the beginning of a round, every player draws two cards. These cards are kept secret from your teammates, and you are not allowed to talk about them at all. Based on just these two cards, you must begin to guess who will end up with the strongest poker hand. Depending on where you believe you will rank among all the hands, you select a white poker chip that has a specific number of stars on it. A chip with more stars indicates a stronger hand. If you already have a pair of cards, you would likely choose the chip with the highest number of stars. If you have a weak hand, like a 2 and a 7, you would probably pick the chip with just one star. Everyone must eventually take a chip, and you have to coordinate this silently without discussing your cards. Once everyone has made their selection, you move on to the next phase of the game.
Next, you reveal three community cards placed in the center of the table. You look at your own two cards and determine what kind of hand combination they can make with the three shared cards. You need to do the ranking again, this time using yellow poker chips. Because you have new information from the community cards, your ranking might change from what you thought in the first stage.
In the following stage, a fourth community card is revealed. You must always use the two cards in your hand to form your combo, but now you have four cards in the common pool to choose three from. You do the ranking for a third time. Finally, a fifth card is revealed, and you do one last ranking before checking to see if you win the round. Only the final ranking is used to determine if you win. The first three stages are just for your reference, to help you decide how to do the ranking in the final stage. If you get the order right, you win the round.
Every round you will do ranking four times
You do need to know a little bit about poker to be able to play The Gang. You need to have some idea of how rare the different hand combinations are. I learned that sometimes even just a pair can be pretty strong. If you get a straight, or a flush, you can probably confidently declare yourself the strongest. Every round you go through four stages. Any change in ranking between the stages is an important clue. For example, when the fourth shared card is revealed and it is a 7, and I happen to have a single 7 in my hand, this gives me a pair, which can make me change my mind about my ranking. I might go from weakest to strongest or second strongest. The key information here for my teammates is a 7 making me change my mind. Throughout the game, players may not exchange any information about their cards. When players have different ideas about how strong a combo is, it can be dangerous. You may need to fail a few times for everyone to become aligned about how strong certain combos are.
This is a creative concept for a game. Texas Hold ’em is a game many people are already familiar with. The Gang might be a good opportunity to introduce non-gamers to the boardgame hobby. The game is for 3 to 6 players, but I suspect the game will be more fun with more players, because it is more challenging. I love a challenge!
