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Knizian Poker

Posted by John Owen
03 Oct 2021
John Owen
(trawlerman)
United States
Lisle
New York
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Responding to Sean's comment here instead of clogging up the trick-taking list with poker game talk.

seandavidross wrote:
I would like to hear more about Chonkers. And Portland. And Sacramento.

Please?
-https://boardgamegeek.com/geeklist/289846/item/8518169?comme...

I added all (but one) of these Knizia games to the database earlier this year. It looks like since then, someone has cleaned up the entries and added nicely cropped snapshots of the rules summaries as found in Blazing Aces.

Here they are:

Oregon is a simple solitaire game, fun enough, but really just an ingenious way of learning and internalizing the poker ranks.
Board Game: Oregon


Portland takes that same solitaire system and makes it a multiplayer solitaire system with each player having their own entire deck. It could be played with any number of players, but I wouldn't play it with more than 2.
Board Game: Portland


Nugget is a very simple "draw and discard" game, with the choice of drawing blind from the deck (keeping it or discarding it and keeping the next blind draw) or drawing someone's previous discard (without discarding yourself).
Board Game: Nugget


Bonanza is similar to Nugget, with everyone drawing from a replenishing river of cards instead of any blind draws from the deck. There is no discarding.
Board Game: Bonanza


Sacramento is the most interesting of these Knizia games so far. It introduces a drafting element. For 1-4 players, Knizia recommends a stripped deck. For 5-6, a full deck. We played 3p with a stripped deck, 7-A. Deal everyone one card. Then deal more cards face-up to the center of the table. The rule is ten cards for the first player, plus 6 cards for each additional player, which will always result in four leftover cards when the game is done. Players take turns drafting from the center, attempting to make the best poker hand. The wrinkle is that everyone sees what everyone else is doing, so there's a delicate balance between pursuing one's own ends and working together to stop others.
Board Game: Sacramento


All of these games have points tables and it's recommended that you play multiple hands which score points depending on your 1st-2nd-3rd-etc placement (with last player usually scoring 0). I'd have to look at my notebook. I think we played all of them using the points (playing games equal to number of players at the table). I can take photos of the points tables and share them if anyone feels inspired to play one of these.

As for the real star, Chonkers, the light family poker game that is better than all of Knizia's light family poker games, that game that everyone is going to love to hate soon enough, well, you just wait...
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