Cockroach Poker

Hope you brought your poker face, well Cockroach Poker might not be real poker, but it's a game that revolves entirely around bluffing. It makes a great filler game for 2-6 although, I wouldn't recommend with less than 4, they do have two player rules but I did not find them very fun. With 4 or more you have a really fun and more importantly quick bluffing game.

The object is to not be the loser, instead of having player elimination, the game is over as soon as one player is eliminated in Cockroach Poker. How do you get eliminated? Easy, by gathering 4 of the same kind of creature face up in front of them first.

So to recap the objective of the game is: to make someone get 4 of a kind before you, you do NOT want four of a kind. These cards need to be face up in front of you, not just in your hand.

You do not want 4 of a kind!!!! One of the 4 cards does
not have a huge glare in order to lose the game.

Gameplay

To start the game the entire deck of 62 cards is shuffled and dealt out evenly to all players. Then the first player picks a card and slides it facedown to anyone they want. As you slide your card you will declare what kind of animal you are sliding, the goal is to make that person guess wrong. So if you slide someone a stink bug, but declare it a 'bat' and the player you gave it to accepted the card, believing it was a bat, he would have to place the card that you "pawned off on him" face up in front of him. If the player calls your bluff, then you instead have to take the card face up in front of you.

Slide a card to another player and declare what it is, in this case a "Bat"

The player accepted the Bat only to find out it was a Stink Bug! That player
must now keep the Stink Bug face up in front of him along with the two
scorpions that were already there. 

After you pass and declare a card to a player they do have another option if they cant decide if you are telling the truth or bluffing. They can choose to peek at the card, declare it as a creature and pass it to another player. If you are the last person to pass on the card you have to make a decision if it is what people say it is, this can get really tricky because with 6 players they could have said it was 5 different things by this point.


Ending the Game

The game ends one of two ways, as I said earlier if someone gets 4 of a kind they are the loser and all other players win. If you have to start the round, by sliding one of your cards to someone, and you don't have any cards left, you lose the game and everyone else wins.

My Thoughts

Although the components are just cards with  8 different types of bugs, rodents and insects they are phenomenal. The art work is fantastic and not a single card has the same art! If you like bluffing Cockroach Poker is great, if you haven't tried many games with bluffing give this a try, if you need to kill some time its great.

Who would enjoy playing Cockroach Poker?

All Gamers: Why? Because who doesn't need to kill 15 minutes at some point, waiting for friends to show up? waiting for pizza? waiting for another game to end? Cockroach Poker can be played whenever wherever, its fun, its fast, its simple, its competitive, and its very unique because not many games have only 1 loser.