In Betweenइन बिट्विन

Players and cards

Two to eight people play with one 52-card pack and no jokers. Cards rank from ace (high) down to two. An ace turned first can be called low.

Everyone starts the game with 1,000 play chips. They are only a way of keeping score: they have no value outside this table and start again from 1,000 every game.

The ante and the order of play

At the start of each round, everyone with chips puts the ante in the pot. Each player then has one turn, starting with the player on the dealer's right and going round to the right (anticlockwise). The dealer plays last, and the deal moves one seat to the right every round.

Your turn

Two cards are turned face up in front of you: the posts. Bet any whole number of chips from 1 up to the pot, as long as you have them, or pass. Then the middle card is turned over:

• Strictly between the posts: you win, and take the amount of your bet out of the pot.
• Outside the posts: you lose, and your bet goes into the pot.
• The same rank as one of the posts: you hit the post and pay twice your bet into the pot (or whatever you have left).

Passing costs nothing. The table shows how many of the cards not yet seen would win, hit a post or lose, so you can judge the gap.

Aces

If the first post is an ace, you call it high or low before the second post is turned over. A low ace counts below the two.

An ace turned as the second post is always high. A low ace and a high ace make the widest gap of all: every card from two to king wins.

Pairs and posts with no gap

If both posts are the same rank, there is nothing between them. Instead, you bet that the middle card will be higher or lower than the pair. Nothing is higher than a pair of aces, so you can only call lower; nothing is lower than a pair of twos, so you can only call higher. A third card of the same rank hits the post.

Posts next to each other, such as 7 and 8, or a low ace and a two, leave no room for a card in between. Your turn passes and nothing is paid.

An empty pot

If a bet wins the whole pot, everyone with chips puts the ante in again at once, and the round carries on.

The deck

One pack is used until it runs out. Then every card that is not on the table is shuffled together again. The table keeps count of the cards turned over since the last shuffle.

Winning the game

A game is 10 rounds, or 5 or 15 if you choose. A player who runs out of chips sits out the rest of the game, and the game ends early when one player holds every chip.

When the game ends, any chips left in the pot are shared by the players who still have chips. The player with the most chips wins.

Number of rounds

Play 5, 10 or 15 rounds. Each player has one turn in every round.

Ante

The ante can be 5, 10 or 20 chips. A bigger ante grows the pot faster, so the bets can be bigger.

Hitting a post

Pay double, as pagat.com and GameRules.com give it, is this table's default. Online Khabar's description of the game at Dashain, and Bicycle, make hitting a post cost only your bet: choose Pay the bet to play that way.

House rules this table does not use

Some groups play with a dealer who covers every bet, count posts next to each other as a loss, pay out automatically on a pair, allow only half the pot in the first round, or make a post cost three times the bet. This table plays the common pot game described above.