Chesspoker

So The Game Crafter has lots of contests to design games.  There were two contests recently, that I wasn't going to participate in until I realized somewhat out of the blue that I could have one simple game that could work for both contests.  The first contest was to design a standard deck of 54 playing cards.  The second contest was to design a game that is a mash-up of two other games.  I'm not sure I have a better explanation for where the idea came from....  it just occurred to me! 

If you've played both Chess and Poker before, Chesspoker is VERY simple and easy to learn.  You have a standard deck of playing cards, but each rank is paired up with a chess piece as well.  Some of the this obvious:  The King and Queen in the card sense are also Kings and Queens in the Chess sense.  The Jack is a Knight, The Ace is a Rook, The Jokers are Bishops and all the numbered cards are Pawns.  The cards also have definite top and bottom to them. 

One round of Chesspoker works like this:  You shuffle the cards and deal out a 4 x 4 chessboard.  The two nearest rows of cards to each player point towards the other player.  Those are you cards to move as chess pieces,  A player goes first (alternate this between rounds).  You move one of your cards just like it was a chess piece and try to capture one of your opponents cards.  If you do capture a card, that card is taken off and used as part of your poker hand.  Once one of the players has captured 5 cards, they other player is in check.  This means that they must capture a card every turn or else move on to scoring the round.  The round ends when an in check player fails to capture a card, or both players have at least 5 cards.  Then you make the best poker hand you can out of the cards you captured.  The winner gets a point.  You play until someone gets to 10 points...  or whatever point value you want really.  It's that simple.