I got into poker at a relatively young age. For most kids in conservative families, it's usually the same story -- one of your relatives probably teaches it to you and tries to get you to sip a beer. I carried over my knowledge of straights and flushes into middle school, where I'd compete for candy in the cafeteria and tell faculty and staff we were playing Go Fish. And in high school, like everyone else during the height of the poker craze that seemingly exploded with Rounders, I played for higher stakes. But by my college years, it kind of tapered off a bit, and now I rarely encounter a situation where I can get some hands in. Yet, I've kept all of my experiences bottled in, including all of the statistical probabilities for each hand, ready to dump at a moment's notice. That proved rather useful for Politaire [Free].
It took me several days, just glancing at the app, to figure out what Politaire meant. Political Solitaire was my first guess. Then I actually played it and "duh," I realized, it's poker and solitaire -- a combo that works pretty well, actually!
Players are graced with a hand of random cards at the start, conveniently color-coded by suit, consisting of choices from a standard two through Ace deck. Right in the upper-right hand corner is a deck, and just like real poker, you can choose how many cards you want to discard to draw more (though the limit here is three). By simply tapping the cards they'll raise up out of your hand, and swiping sends ...