Poker

• 2 to 9 players, every seat for itself. Teams do not exist here, so the lobby shows one flat Players list.
• Everyone starts with the same chip stack. The match is a tournament: lose your chips and you are eliminated but keep spectating, and the last player holding chips wins.
• It is played on a dedicated arena: one circular pit, no castles, no build zones, no economy. Chips are the only currency, and the usual RTS interface is replaced by a poker HUD showing your cards, the seats, the pot, the blinds, and your action buttons.

1. Forced bets. Every live seat posts the ante. The seat left of the dealer button posts the small blind and the next the big blind (heads-up, the dealer is the small blind and acts first). Blind levels climb on a real-time schedule and apply from the next hand. A short stack posts what it can, all-in for less.
2. Deal. Each live seat is dealt a hidden hand of 1 to 2 cards. A card is a unit type plus a rolled count from the deck's range, for example Assassin one to eight, Footman two to twelve, or Red Dragon one to three. Hands are dealt fully up front but revealed one card at a time, so you see card one now.
3. Boon reveal. One random battlefield boon for the hand is announced right away, on the HUD and as glowing text on the arena floor, such as "Double Shield, all units" or "Grovewardens gain attack." It is public information, so factor it into your betting.
4. Redraw window. A simultaneous timed window where each player keeps their hand or redraws it. Redraws are limited per hand, a redraw re-rolls the whole hand, and you still only see the current card. A timeout keeps.
5. Betting on card one. Standard poker in turn order: fold, check, call, raise, or all-in. A full raise reopens the action, an all-in short of a minimum raise does not, and the round closes once every seat still able to act has acted since the last raise and matched the price. Each turn has a timer, and a timeout checks if it is free or folds otherwise.
6. Card two revealed. Everyone still in the hand sees their second card, and a fresh betting round opens.
7. Showdown. Every army still in the hand spawns evenly around the pit, facing center, with the boon applied to qualifying units. The armies fight entirely on their own, with no player control, until one stands or the 60-second cap hits.
8. Payout. Full side pots: each all-in caps what that seat can win, and overflow forms side pots contested only by the deeper stacks. The last army standing takes the pots it is eligible for. If the timer expires with several survivors, each pot splits evenly among its eligible survivors. If everyone folds to one player they take it uncontested, any uncalled raise refunded, and never reveal their hand.
9. Next hand. Eliminations apply, the dealer button advances, and after a short intermission the next hand deals.

There is no hand-ranking chart. The battlefield is the ranking. You are weighing raw stats, splash damage, anti-air, casters, and how a composition survives a multi-army free-for-all. A big single-target army can crush one opponent and melt in a six-way brawl, while durable splash scales. The boon can swing all of it.

A disconnected player's seat plays on at bot pace and their dealt army still fights, and reconnecting re-attaches to the seat and hands the cards back. Bots bet with a pot-odds heuristic on the cards they have seen, with a chance to bluff.