Cockroach Poker

10th December 2019

It's a Tuesday evening in Woking and we're at 'The Sovereigns' with the board game club.

The first game of the night was 'Cockroach Poker'.
Now I mean this in a good way: But Cockroach Poker is quite possibly the most horrible game of all time.
It's a horrible game all about horribly lying and bluffing.

At the end of one game a player said to me. "Can we please now play a game where we don't all hate each other!".

That sums Cockroach Poker pretty nicely.

What's in a game?
Cockroach Poker consists of nothing more or less than a deck of 64 cards. There are 8 types of card (All based on types of 'horrible' creature.) and 8 copies of each type.
Because my blog demands a bullet-point list, i thought I'd list what's on the cards.

​All the cards are well illustrated with stylised pictures of all the 'creepy-crawlies'. The art hasn't skimped on either, there could have been just 8 illustrations for the 8 types. But they are different pictures for each card, so 64 in total.

• Bat.
• Cockroach.
• Fly.
• Scorpion.

• Rat.
• Spider.
• Stinkbug.
• Toad.

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Card font and back.

There 64 illustrations for the 64 cards.

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How's it play?
Setup: Deal out the entire deck to all players. Players must keep their hand of cards secret.

Cockroach Poker is a game about trying to guess whether the other players are speaking the truth or lying through their teeth

• The active player takes any card from their hand, places it face-down on the playing area and pushes it towards another second player. When doing so, the active player must state what creature is on the card. This statement can be true or false.
• The second player now becomes the active player. Without looking at the card, the must now make a choice, accept the card or pass the card.

Accepting the card:

• If the second player chooses to accept the card. Still without looking at the card, they must state whether they think the first player was telling the truth or lying (Whether the first players statement is true or false.).
• The card is then flipped face-up.
• If the second player correctly surmised whether the first player was truthful or lying, then the first player must place the card face-up in their own playing area.
• If the second player failed to gauge the whether the first player was speaking truthfully or not, then the second player places the card in their playing area.

Passing the card:

• If the second player chooses the pass the card, they (And only they.) can now look at the card.
• As in the first step, the second player must push the card (Still face-down.) to another third player and state what creature is on the card. Again, this statement can be true or false, the active player is not required to honour the statement made by the first player. Thus the second player can contradict the first player.
• Now the third player is faced with the choice to accept or pass the card and the above steps are repeated.
• A card cannot be passed to a player who has already received it. So if a player is the last person to receive the card, it sucks to be them! They cannot pass it on and must try and guess if the player who passed it to them is telling the truth or lying.
  
• Play continues until a player has put the card in their playing area. In this case they become the active player, chooses a card pushes it to another player again, starting the process anew.
  

Endgame
Their are 2 ways the game can end.

The game will immediately end when any player has put the 4th card of a single type into their playing are.
Or when any player must play a card to another player, but has no more cards in their hand. 

In both cases, when this occurs, that player is the loser and all other players are winners!

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3 rats & close to losing.

Still 3 rats at the game end!

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Overall
Cockroach Poker is a clever little bluffing game. Telling the truth is equally bad for players as lying, so there's no 'easy' get-out by telling the truth.

Having a card pushed towards and trying to guess whether your 'friend' is lying or not can be a stress. But when a player chooses to pass the card, it doesn't get them out of hot water. It just changes the source of the stress, now players are hoping that their opponents are can't see through their statement.

I've also seen players counting the number of cards that have already been played before making a choice. But it doesn't matter because the whole deck has been dealt out to players!

Not only is the game negative and horrible, so is the end. The game only plays to the first loser and everybody else wins! No one wants to be the sole loser!

So in summing up: Cockroach Poker is a horrible, horrible game and everyone should play it.