Bluff Stack

How to play

1. Know the goal: two marks win: Everyone holds four square discs: three flowers and one skull. Call that you can flip N discs and then flip N flowers in a row to earn a mark; the first player with two marks wins. Hit a skull and you lose a disc for good — lose all four and you're out, and the last player standing also wins.
2. Place: put one disc face down on your stack: At the start of each round everyone places one disc from hand face down on their own stack. Your hand sits at the bottom of the screen; tap a disc to place it. A flower is honest, a skull is a trap for whoever flips your stack.
3. Stack or challenge: Starting with the first player, each turn you either stack another disc on top or tap Challenge and bid how many discs you can flip (from 1 up to every disc on the table). After a challenge everyone else must raise or pass; bidding the whole table starts the flip immediately. With an empty hand you can only challenge.
4. Flip your own stack first, then the tops of others: The highest bidder flips: first their entire own stack from top to bottom, then the top disc of opponents' stacks one at a time. Reach the bid with only flowers and you succeed; any skull ends it. Hit your own skull and you choose which disc to lose; hit someone else's and you lose a random disc that only you get to see.
5. Read each opponent's record, then play again: Every computer seat wears an animal mask showing its style (Bold, Steady, Sly) and a live record of how often it bid, its highest bid and how many players it caught. There are no faces to read, so you read behaviour. When the game ends, play again, replay the same table, or copy the game link for a friend.

Rules & variants

Bluff Stack is a stack-bid-flip bluffing game: the discs have no numbers or suits, only flowers and skulls. Each player gets three flowers and one skull, and every mind game comes down to a single question — is there a skull in that stack? Tables run from 3 to 6 players: you plus 2–5 computer opponents, changed from the menu for the next game.

A round has three parts. Place: everyone puts one disc face down at the same time. Stack: from the first player onward, each player either stacks another disc or challenges with a bid between 1 and the number of discs on the table. Bid: after a challenge the others raise or pass, and a player who passes is done bidding for the round. Bidding ends when only the high bidder is left or someone bids the whole table, and the high bidder flips.

Two hard rules make the bluff work: the flipper must turn over their whole own stack first, and may only flip the top disc of an opponent's stack, never skipping down. That's why a classic bluff is a skull at the bottom of your own stack and a low opening bid — if someone outbids you, they have to come through your stack. In reverse, players who bid usually have clean stacks, so flipping bidders first is the safer read.

Failure costs a disc. Hit your own skull and you pick whether to lose a flower or your skull (it's automatic if only one kind is left). Hit another player's skull and you lose a random disc whose type only you see, while the skull's owner scores a catch. Once your skull is gone you can never set a trap again; lose all four discs and you're out.

The flipper starts the next round; if the flipper is knocked out by someone else's skull, that skull's owner starts. The three computer styles only use public information: Bold bids high and often one too many, Steady only moves on a big table, and Sly opens low with a skull buried in its stack. None of them ever looks at your discs.

This is a pure deduction and bluffing game. A bid only means how many discs you can flip — there are no stakes, chips or money anywhere. Every game has a code (for example 4-1K3F: a 4-player table with seed 1K3F); the same code and the same moves make every computer decision repeat exactly, so you can compare play with friends.

FAQ