Bluff Card

One rank for the whole round, four cards face down at most, eight seconds to call a liar

Single player
cards
strategy

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About Bluff Card

Bluff Card is the lying game, dealt out at a small green table against one, two or three CPU players from a standard fifty-two card deck. Whoever starts a round names the rank everybody will claim for the rest of it, and from then on every play is face down and every claim is that same rank. The cards say nothing; the only information is how many people have claimed and how much of that rank you can account for yourself.

Calling is the sharp end. After each play there is an eight-second window with a bar draining across the screen, and once it empties the claim stands. Call correctly and the liar takes the pile. Call wrongly and it is yours — which by the middle of a round can be twenty cards, and which also hands you the job of starting the next one. A tally of hands won by you against hands won by the CPUs sits on the end screen, and that is the only scoring the game keeps.

What is different about this version

Fixing one rank for an entire round changes the arithmetic completely. There are only four of anything, so every claim is measured against a number that becomes public by the end of the round, and by the fourth or fifth play somebody is certainly lying. The CPUs use that. Their call odds climb with how many of the round's rank they hold themselves, with the size of the pile, and steeply with how many cards you put down — claiming three adds a large chunk, claiming four adds more again. A Hard CPU also remembers what it dumped into the pile and what has already been claimed. One quirk is carried over deliberately: everyone goes soft on a player down to three cards or fewer, which is exploitable.

How to play Bluff Card

Pick a table of two, three or four players and an Easy, Normal or Hard CPU.
If the round is yours to start, choose the rank everyone will claim.
Tap up to four cards and play them face down as that rank, whether or not they are.
While the bar drains, decide whether to call — the cards flip and whoever was wrong takes the pile.
Empty your hand and survive one last round of calls to win.

Controls

Desktop	Click cards to select up to four, click Play to commit them, and Call Bluff during the window.
Phone or tablet	Tap to select and deselect cards, tap Play, and tap Call Bluff before the bar runs out.
Players	One player. Any other characters on screen are run by the game.

Strategy

Count the rank, not the cards. From the moment it is named you know there are four in play and you can see how many you hold. Everything after that is subtraction: if you hold two and the table has already claimed three, the next claim is a lie and calling it is nearly free.

Size your lies. The CPUs weight their calls heavily by how many cards you put down, so one card is a cheap, quiet lie and four is an announcement. They also call more readily when holding cards of that rank themselves, which you cannot see — another reason to keep each claim small rather than betting a whole turn on one. If you must dump rubbish, dump it a card at a time across several turns, early, while there is nothing on the table to lose.

Think about who picks up. Whoever loses a call takes the pile and starts the next round, naming a rank they hold plenty of, so calling wrongly late costs twice: the cards and the initiative. The endgame runs the other way. When someone plays their last cards the table gets one final chance to call, and the CPUs deliberately soften towards anyone close to finishing, so nobody else is likely to do it. If you have any doubt at all about that final claim, call it — letting it stand simply ends the hand.

Mistakes that cost you the game

Bluffing with three or four cards at once. The call probability rises sharply with the count.
Holding matching cards back to keep the hand tidy, when those are the only ones you can play honestly.
Letting the bar run out while you think. Once it closes the claim is accepted and the moment is gone.

Tips

When you start a round, name the rank you hold most of — the CPUs do exactly this.
Bluff in the first two or three plays, while the pile is barely worth anything.
If you hold three of the named rank yourself, almost any multi-card claim is a lie.
Watch the seat that started the round; they chose that rank because they held it.
Two-player tables are sharper than four-player ones: every claim is either yours or theirs.
On Hard, assume anything you dumped into the pile is remembered.