Poker Squared, a solitaire card game copyright 2009 by Randy Fellmy (aka Coises), is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the Expat/MIT License.
The playing card images used are in the public domain, being derived by the author from Richard Hoelscher’s paris.svg deck, which he has released into the public domain.
Poker Squared is played on a five-by-five square at the left of the game window. At the upper right of the game window is the stock, which contains all the cards that remain in play which are not in the square. A game consists of five regular rounds and one bonus round.
In each round, the object is to make the best combination of poker hands across and down in the square. The point values of the various poker hands are given in the table at the lower right.
When you click the Deal button, 25 cards are drawn at random from the stock and placed on the square. To play, first click on a card in the square, then on another card either in the stock or in the square. If the second card you click is from the stock, the stock card replaces the card in the square, and the card in the square is removed from play. If the second card you click is in the square, the two cards exchange positions. In either case, the row and column containing the first card you clicked are then locked: you can’t click on another card in that row or column as the first card. (You can always click on any card in the square or in the stock as the second card. This means that you can move a card in a locked row or column, but only by exchanging it with a card that is not locked.)
After you have clicked on five pairs of cards, all the rows and columns will be locked, and the round is over. However, you don’t have to use all five turns; if you reach a point where you don’t want to change anything else, click the Done button to complete the round.
While you are playing the first five rounds, the computer deals a bonus round and calculates the best possible score for the cards dealt. When you click the Bonus button, that score is displayed as the Bonus objective and a 90-second timer starts. If you can meet the objective within 90 seconds, you earn 250 points; if you meet the objective but take more than 90 seconds, you earn 150 points; otherwise, you earn nothing.
In the bonus round, only 16 cards are dealt to the square; these cards cannot be moved or changed. The four corners are not used, and five free spaces form an X in the center of the square in which you can place and move cards. To play, first click on one of the free spaces in the square, then on another card either in the stock or in a free space in the square. If the second card you click is from the stock, the stock card replaces the card in the square, and the card you replaced returns to the stock. If the second card you click is in a free space in the square, the two cards exchange positions. The bonus round ends when you meet the objective, or when you click the Show button, which shows a play that meets the objective.
There is no “undo” in the regular rounds of Poker Squared; however, if you click on a card in the square and decide before you click on a second card that you don’t want to change it after all, click on the first card again to cancel the move.
In the bonus round there is no move you can make that you cannot reverse, since free squares are never locked and cards you replace are returned to the stock. If you want to clear a free square to make it easier to visualize the results of putting other cards there, click twice on the card.
If you have ended the bonus round by clicking the Show button, you can toggle between the computer’s solution and yours by clicking on any card in the square.
