Poker rules. Market cards.
It's six-handed Texas Hold'em — blinds, betting, bluffing, the pot. One twist: your two cards aren't a poker hand, they're a $10,000 BTC trading book, and the community cards are replaced by the live market.
Read any card in two seconds
Two rules, that's it: colour is direction, rank is power. Suit does nothing else — ♠ and ♣ are twins, so are ♥ and ♦. Courts and aces are the big guns. Tap around:
Two cards, one book
Each card runs half your $10k — so a pair can never over-allocate. Same direction stacks, opposite directions hedge, and equal-and-opposite plays perfectly flat.
A hand, play by play
One betting round before the price is even known, then live BTC with betting on top of it, then the lock.
The clock belongs to the market, not to you
This is the part that makes it feel different from poker. The market runs on a wall clock that nobody at the table controls — while the betting runs at whatever pace the players set.
Opens on a round minute, closes a fixed span later: 3 minutes on Turbo, 10 minutes on Standard. The deal price is stamped at the open, the final price at the close. Neither waits for anybody.
A round ends when every player has acted — but never sooner than 1 minute on Turbo or 3 minutes on Standard, so the market always has time to move. Above that floor it stretches to fit, up to two raises. You get 30s per decision on Turbo, 45s on Standard.
Done betting early? You sit and watch the tape decide it. Still betting when the price locks? Keep going — the hand settles the moment the last bet is in, against a price that is already frozen.
The betting is pure poker
Your book was trash anyway — or was it? Nobody ever knows.
Stay in the hand, keep riding the tape, pay the price of admission.
Big book? Bet it. Flat book? Bet it anyway — that's the game.
Two ways to win every pot: everyone folds, or your book is best at showdown. Cards are sealed at the deal — the only decision left is how much USD to risk on what you're holding.
That's the whole game.
Paper tables are free and run the same deck against the same live BTC. Six seats, blinds from $0.10/$0.20 up to $10/$20, and three house bots that give up their seats one by one as real players arrive.