About House Of Decks

Almost every game here is learned the same way: somebody explains it badly after lunch, you play three rounds arguing about the rules, and from then on every household has its own version. El Presi, El Mentiroso and Dedo Cagado have no official rulebook to appeal to, and on the rare occasions they are written down online it is a three-line list that answers none of the questions that actually come up while playing.

House Of Decks started from wanting to play those games with people who were not in the same room, and from having to decide - in order to program them - which exact version of each rule the server would implement. That decision is what the rules section documents: not "the official rules", because there are none, but exactly what the table does when you play here.

Alongside the house games sit classics with well-settled rules - Poker, Blackjack, Continental, Cinquillo, Ronda, Envite Canario - implemented in versions that are also documented one by one, including any simplifications against the traditional game.

Twelve card games, ten of them already playable and two in development, spanning popular Spanish games and international classics. Each has its own rules page covering the deal, the turn, scoring, strategy advice and the questions that come up most often.

There are two ways to play: create a room and pass the code to your friends, or drop into Quick Play, which seats you with whoever is waiting at that moment without any organising.

No account is needed to play. Creating one is free and lets you reserve your player name, keep your coins and cosmetics, and pick your seat back up from another device.

Everything runs in the browser, with no downloads or extensions. The server is the authority for every game: it deals the cards, validates every move and sends each player only the information that belongs to them, so there is no way to see other people’s cards by inspecting traffic or page source.

Each browser tab is its own player identity, which lets two people play from the same computer in separate tabs without clashing.

Games live in memory while they last. If the server restarts, games in progress are lost; what does persist is your account, if you made one, with your name, your coins and your cosmetics.

There is no real-money play and nothing can be bought with money. Poker and Blackjack chips are the game’s scoreboard and represent no value: they cannot be deposited, withdrawn or exchanged for anything.

Coins are earned by playing and are only good for cosmetics in the shop: card backs, avatar frames, titles and table themes. They confer no in-game advantage whatsoever.

The site is supported by advertising, always placed outside the game tables and labelled as such so it cannot be mistaken for content. What data is collected and how cookies are used is set out in the privacy policy.

The whole site is available in Spanish and English, including the full rules for every game and the in-game messages. Language is switched from the menu and remembered for your next visit.

Several table themes are available, and the design is built to work the same on a phone as on a desktop: tables rearrange themselves for the screen size rather than shrinking.

House Of Decks is a personal project, built and maintained by one person. There is no company behind it, no investors and no support team: there is an email address that gets read.

Games are added one at a time, and rules get corrected when somebody points out that a table does something different from what is written. If you play a variant of one of these games that is not covered here, telling us about it is the most useful contribution you can make.