The Gang Review

The Gang Show

Are you someone who’s fascinated by all the different winning combinations in Poker but are put off playing by the overly hostile nature of playing the game, to say nothing of the potential financial loss, well, The Gang is the game for you!

In what is decribed as a Cooperative Poker game (I know, right!) you work with your fellow players to estimate whose got the winning hand and who should have folded. All done without direct communication. This all comes together under the thematic veneer of robbing a vault, presumably where the other suckers who are playing for money end up donating their life savings, or getting caught in the act.

So how’s it all done?

Gang Way

The Gang is essentially a game of Texas Hold ‘em but with everyone playing together instead of against one another. Don’t worry if you’ve never played Texas Hold ‘em, it’s all explained here and everyone has handy reference cards. There’s no betting or bluffing or need of your celebrated poker face.

The Gang has four rounds. To start each player is dealt two cards, the pocket, which they keep secret. They must now estimate where they will finish at the end of the hand. There are a number of chips ranked from 1 up to the number of players in 4 colours for each of the rounds. In the first round the white chips are used and players take a chip and place it in front of them with the 1-star chip representing the weakest hand.

At this stage it’s largely guess work where you will end up unless you’ve been dealt a pair or some high value cards. There is no set order of play you just take a chip when you’ve made a decision. This can be from the pool or from another player if you think they’ve got the wrong value. You can put your chip back if you change your mind but you can’t put a chip in front of another player and you can’t have more than 1 chip in front of you. When everyone has a white chip we go to Round 2 “The Flop.”

Now things get a bit more interesting. Three cards are dealt out and you can mentally combine these with your Pocket to make actual final hands. Now you have a better idea of where you might end up in the ranking and choose an appropriate yellow chip. You can’t alter chips already placed but you certainly can improve or downgrade your previous guess. Also consider what the others are doing.

Round 3 “The Turn” sees another card dealt to the table and the Orange chips are now used in the same process. Finally, Round 4 “The River” sees 1 more card on the table and final guesses are made via the Red chips.

And now we have the final denouement. Starting from the lowest chip, hands are revealed and each must be better than the last. If they all are you unlock a vault card to reveal the gold. If not an alarm is sounded and you scarper.

That ends the first “heist” and you shuffle and deal and go again. If you, as a team, unlock 3 vaults everyone wins if you set off 3 alarms everyone loses. That’s pretty straightforward and you should be able to play in the specified 20 minutes.

The Gang’s All Here