Poker with a Quirky Twist
All-in Predictions is a Poker inspired bid and bluff game for 2- 5 players from Phil Walker-Harding. There seems to have been a recent plethora of poker based games hitting shelves recently - so how does this one compare, and is it for you?
How Does it Play
The rules are pretty straightforward, with minor tweaks for 2 players as the game centers around not only how good your hand is, but how good your opponents’ hands are or, importantly, how good you and they think they are.
The gameplay is driven by symbols on each card with mandatory and optional actions to take and place cards to and from your hand into a row on the table. When the rows are complete the round ends immediately and you are into bidding / predicting phase. You have to think and play quickly before those rows fill up - often you will find someone goes All In and you don’t get another turn! That can be annoying! All is not lost, however.
The prediction phase is where you have to consider your hand strength in terms of rune value (from card guides) and what you think your opponent has taken from the deck or the display - one of the card actions is to ask your opponent what their hand strength is- super important when played at the right time but only at that point in time is it useful.
Do you then go All In and forefeit the rest of your turns with a good hand and let your opponents finish more turns or do you bluff and then under bid your own hand prediction? Matching predictions means the pot splits so predicting against yourself and your own hand can be the smart play - but not if your oppoenents have the same idea.
This all adds to the twist on the usual poker hand play and it makes it a slightly quirky proposition. I think otherwise it would descend into well….poker. You can underplay your hand or position to make sure your opponents don’t take the whole pot, which grows each round, but if you play weaker hands, your money reward for each hand will be a lot lower….a nice little trade off. Most money wins after three rounds
Who is it for?
I think this is an excellent after dinner or after game game. When you’ve got 20 minutes to kill after a session and you want a bit of fun a bit more involved than Flip 7 or a few games with friends after dinner, higher player counts get far more out of the bidding and prediction phase. As a small box it fits into that what I call Hotel game, either a small table in the bar or on the bed - it doesn’t need a complicated set up and its an easy pick up and play.
The box art is lovely and the box has a slight embossed quality finish but it is in the card art that this game pops its head up over the parapet. It would have been too easy to pick a standard deck and add a few bits on to the cards for actions but the art is fresh and gorgeous and the colour schemes are just lovely.
The card weight used for the runes was very solid and made you feel like you were handling something that had been thought about - again it would have been so easy to have some flimsy stock to use as currency but this has some substance and I really like that. It makes you think again that the designers and producers have given it some thought, and that you are handling something with a bit of presence - a bit more grown up.
In summary this is a fun play, enhanced by the component quality and fantastic card art, better at higher player counts due to the prediction phase but that is where the spark is.
