Widgetational Software
Solly-inspired Video Poker
Download (1.1 MB) for Mac OS X 10.4+» Solly — 'taire it up.
» Tile Game mini — Dashboard Widget based on Solly: Tile Game
» Peg Game mini — Dashboard Widget based on Solly: Peg Game
» "Featured Widget" — Apple.com Dashboard Widgets page
Poker Game mini is a Solly-based widget featuring the basic goal of video poker ...
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Make the best possible hand of five cards, given two opportunities to hold some cards and redeal the others. |
... with a challenging mathematical enhancement ...
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Arithmetical symbols on the cards determine the hand's value. |
Scoring
To compute a hand's value, start with zero and apply, in left-to-right order, the arithmetic operations depicted on the cards. The hand at right has a value of 303:
| Start with zero | → | 0 | ||
| /J | divides the initial value by eleven | → | 0 | |
| +4 | increases the result by four | → | 4 | |
| x6 | multiplies the result by six | → | 24 | |
| xK | multiplies the result by thirteen | → | 312 | |
| –9 | decreases the result by nine | → | 303 | |
The steps in this computation appear along the top of the Poker Game mini window, with the final result appearing at the bottom as the "current hand" value.
Strengthen Numbers
Since order is important, Poker Game mini allows the player to rearrange the cards in a given hand, which can vastly improve (or utterly destroy) the hand's value. For example, consider these three hands with the same five cards:
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| hand value: –698 | hand value: 0 | hand value: 303 |
(Even higher and lower hand values are possible. Can you find them?) Most dramatically, the hand with the highest possible value —223,080— contains cards that can be arranged to give a hand value of just 13.
Sign Matters
Unlike other Solly-based games, Poker Game mini isn't entirely neutral on the difference between positive and negative values. The game's "Total Score" is a running tally of hand values and only reaches impressively-large numbers if past positive and negative hands haven't cancelled each other out very much. Even so, large negative numbers can be just as impressive as large positive numbers (you aren't playing with money, after all), and therefore you are free to decide for yourself which ones you like better.
"Hard Mode"
Poker Game mini's "Hard Mode" locks held cards in place after a redeal, limiting the player's ability to take advantage of (or minimize the damage from) new cards coming to the hand.
Version History
- (1.0.1) Minor tweaks for Mac OS X 10.5 ("Leopard") compatibility
Widget Installation Instructions
Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger is required.
If you're using Safari and have set Safari to open "Safe" files after downloading, click the "Download" link. When the widget download is complete, show Dashboard, click the Plus sign to display the Widget Bar, and click the widget's icon in the Widget Bar to open it.
If you're using a browser other than Safari, or have set Safari not to open "Safe" files, click the "Download" link. When the widget download is complete, unarchive it, and place it in /Library/Widgets/ in your home folder. Then show Dashboard, click the Plus sign to display the Widget Bar, and click the widget's icon in the Widget Bar to open it.