Big Two Express

Big Two Express deals Big Two — chor dai di, da lao er, Pusoy Dos, Capsa — to the four phones around the table. Thirteen cards each, first out wins the hand: one phone hosts, the rest join — over Wi-Fi, over Bluetooth, over a phone's hotspot, or through Google Nearby.

NOTHING LEAVES THE ROOM
There is no server, no account and no sign-in. The phones talk to each other directly, and a hand exists only on the phones playing it. Bluetooth needs no network at all, which means a train, a power cut or a cabin with no signal is still a table.

THE GAME, IN FULL
• The order runs 3 up to the ace, then the 2 highest of all; within a rank, diamonds are lowest, then clubs, hearts and spades
• Thirteen cards each. Whoever holds the 3 of diamonds leads the first hand, and the first play has to include it. After that the last hand's winner leads
• A play is one card, a pair, three of a kind, or a five-card hand: a straight, a flush, a full house, four of a kind with any card, or a straight flush
• Beat a play with the same number of higher cards, or pass. A five-card hand beats any of a lower kind
• When everybody else passes, the last to play starts again with anything. A pass is for that turn, or for the whole round if the table chooses
• The first player out ends the hand. Everybody else is charged a point for every card left, doubled at ten cards or more and tripled at thirteen
• Once anybody reaches the limit — 50, or 30 or 100 if the table chooses — the lowest total wins
• Pagat's main rules, played the same on every phone

SHORT OF PLAYERS? SEAT A BOT
A bot is a player with no phone, and Big Two needs four, so this is what makes a game possible when only two or three of you are free — or one of you, against three. Seat one, two or three, and give each a memory dial from 0 to 100: the chance, each turn, that it notices how few cards the others have left. A bot leads its low cards, a straight off the bottom of its hand before a lone three, follows as cheaply as it can, and will not spend a two early. Once somebody is down to a card or two, it plays as high as it can to keep them from the lead.

BUILT FOR A REAL TABLE
• A code the host reads out, mixed into the handshake, so being in range is not the same as being invited
• The first screen has Quick game, Play against bots and Play with friends. Save a table of bots as your quick game and it opens in one tap
• Tap to raise cards; Play says what they make, and what is wrong with them is said before anything is pressed
• The play to beat, who made it, and the cards left in every hand, always on the screen
• Your hand sorted by rank or by suit, held full-screen in two rows or one, and a Hide button for when somebody leans over
• A score sheet for everybody, hand by hand
• A phone that drops out can come back and take its seat again
• 33 languages, and the cards stay left to right in right-to-left ones
• Share a win: an "I won!" card with the final score, sent wherever you choose
• When a phone loses touch, the host chooses: wait for them, or drop them and play on

NO MONEY, EVER
Nothing to buy, nothing to cash out, no real-money play of any kind. The scores are scores. The game is free and shows ads, never on the table while a hand is being played.