The Gang: The Cooperative Poker Game Review

Normally when you play Poker, you’re playing to beat the other players. But with The Gang, a cooperative Poker game, you’re working with the other players to pull off a series of bank heists – pretend ones, of course. Essentially, you’ve got to evaluate the strength of your own hand against the strength of everyone else’s without talking about it. You do NOT want to bluff in this game. You can play the game with three to six players ages 10 and up. 

Each heist consists of four rounds. In the first round, each player gets two cards as “pocket cards”. Only you can look at your pocket cards. The white chips get placed in the center of the table, and these show an increasing number of stars to indicate the strength of the chips. If you think you have the strongest hand, you’ll take the chip with the most stars. A hand consists of the pocket cards and the community cards, which come into play in the next round. Once each player has a white chip, you move on to round two. One player draws three cards from the deck and places them face up in the center of the playing space as “community cards”. Then the yellow chips get placed in the center. Now, each player must evaluate their pocket cards with the new cards drawn and pick which yellow chip best represents it. Once each player has a yellow chip, proceed to round three. One more community card will be drawn from the deck, and the orange chips get laid out for players to take. Once all players have an orange chip, it’s time for the last round. Another community card is drawn from the deck, and the red chips are laid out for players to take. At this point, the only chips that matter are the red chips. Beginning with the one-star red chip, players reveal their hands in ascending order and declare their best possible poker hand made up of exactly five cards. If everyone reveals equally strong or stronger hands, the heist is successful, and you get to flip a vault card to the gold side. If one of you reveals a weaker hand than the previously revealed hand, the heist fails because you organized yourselves incorrectly. You’ll have to flip an alarm card to the red side. Now it’s time for another heist. If you flip three vault cards to the gold side, you win! But if you flip three alarm cards to the red side, you lose.

Of course, players need to be familiar with the rankings of different card combinations, from a pair to a Royal Flush, and this is all outlined in the instructions. There are also reference cards to remind you of the hand rankings and the flow of gameplay. 

Once your gang has mastered the basic gameplay, there are instructions for three more advanced versions that use challenge and specialist cards.