Games

The games are on. Pick your table.

Everything below opens right here on this page — no lobby, no link-hunting. Chess against the house bot or a friend, a trivia night for your crew, play-money cards, 501 darts against the house thrower, and 8-ball on a real physics table. Records save to your profile; the cards run on play chips only, always.

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Chess

Full-rules chess — the house bot at five levels, pass-and-play on one screen, or an online game with a friend by invite code.

Sit down at the board ↓

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Trivia Night

Host a night that stands on its own — invite by link, gather your Trivia Crew, or open it to the house. Your questions or Luka's bank, host-approved before it runs, live with Luka as MC or async on your crew's schedule.

Set up a night ↓

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Cards & darts

Play-money blackjack and no-limit hold'em — solo against added house players or live with friends — plus 501 darts: tap the board, mind the bust, finish on a double.

The Card Room ↓ · The dartboard ↓

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Billiards — 8-Ball

A real physics table and full house bar rules: the house bot at three levels, pass-and-play, or an online table with a friend by invite code.

Rack 'em ↓

The social core sits one door over: Pick'em — private groups, invite links, and season-long standings.

Chess

The complete game — castling, en passant, promotion by your pick, check, mate, and stalemate all enforced. Play the house bot (five levels, from House Casual to House Master), share the screen in pass-and-play, or start an online game and hand a friend the invite code: you're White, the code seats him at Black, and the board stays in sync move by move. Online games ride your clubhouse account, so they wait for sign-in and the member database — the board says so plainly when they aren't switched on. One simplification, stated on the board: the 50-move draw is claimed automatically and threefold repetition isn't tracked.

The Chess Academy — the ladder

Ten rungs, every one played on the board, none of them read. The tactics rungs are find-the-move positions — a fork (one move, two targets), a pin (a piece that may not move), a skewer (the big piece in front, the bigger prize behind it), a discovered attack (step aside and uncover a line), and removal of the guard (capture what defends the square you need). The last two rungs are endgames you play out against House Casual: the king-and-queen mate pattern, and the opposition (kings face to face; whoever moves, gives ground). Every position was verified against this board's own engine before it shipped — a "solution" that didn't check out didn't ship. Tap a rung and play it.

Post-game review

Review my last game against the bot

Finished a game against the house bot up above? It stays on the board until you start a new one — and this review replays it with the house engine's own evaluation, finds the moves where the game actually turned, and shows the better move the engine saw at each one, replayable on the board. It's the house engine's read, not gospel: a clubhouse engine, honest about its limits.

Play with friends

Your table, your people. Host a poker or blackjack table and invite friends by link or with a six-character code — play it live together, or set it to over time and the table waits for each player to take a turn when life allows. House bots can fill the empty seats so the game never stalls waiting on a full roster, and a friend arriving can take a bot's seat. Chips are play chips only — free, refilled by the house, never purchasable or redeemable, worth nothing off this site. There are no pots, no QR codes, and nothing to settle, because there is nothing to settle.

The Card Room

Every clubhouse needs a felt table in the back. Ours seats a crowd: blackjack at a real multi-seat table and no-limit hold'em for two to six — against added house players here, or against your own people at a friends table from the section above. Play chips only, and Luka sits ringside: open the Ask Luka panel at any table and he coaches from your actual cards.

Blackjack — a real table, and Counting School

Six-deck shoe, dealer stands on all 17s, blackjack pays 3:2, double down on your first two cards. No splits and no insurance — the table says so itself. Add house players and every seat is dealt from the same shoe, cards face-up, so you feel a real table's card flow — then flip on Counting School: the Hi-Lo running count and true count off every card the table can see, a cards-seen tray, the Call-the-count drill, and a bet-sizing sandbox. Your record — hands, wins, blackjacks, biggest win — saves to your profile.

Poker — no-limit hold'em, two to six seats

Blinds 10/20, button rotates, side pots settle right, real hand evaluation down to the wheel. Add house players — each with a named style, printed on the table — or take a seat at a friends table above. Turn on Show the numbers for the ESPN view: your equity against the field at every street, simulated over thousands of runouts, pot odds in plain words, and a Hint button that calls the play the math makes. Against other members you only ever see your own numbers — the full reveal is for showdown, and the face-up coach view is for house-player games only.

Play money only — no real-money gambling here, ever.

Chips are free play chips. They are handed out and refilled by the site, and they are never purchasable, never redeemable, and worth nothing anywhere off this site. Nobody can buy chips, cash chips out, or settle a card game in money here.

What you win is the game itself: the table, leaderboard points, season records, and trophies for your profile. That's the whole prize pool — bragging rights, kept on the record.

There are no pot features anywhere near the card room — no pot ledger, no organizer QR code, no buy-in language tied to money. That is deliberate and permanent: on Pick'em the games being picked happen out in the world; at these tables we deal the cards, so money on the table would make this site the casino. The one exception in the clubhouse — a Pick'em group settling its own pot off-site, friend to friend — never applies to card games. See Pick'em for that line, in full.

Events Near You

When the free game gives you the itch for a real table

Play free here first — then, when you want a real room, ask Luka. Tell him your state and area and what you're looking for — a poker room or card club, a tournament series, a charity poker night, or a free bar poker league — and he'll work from the official venue and series sources he can check, with the date he checked them, and link you out to the venue's own page to register. We never take entries, registrations, or a cut of anything, and casino listings carry the venue's own age rule (usually 21+).

No directory is dressed up as complete here: Luka names the sources he checked and says plainly when he can't verify a listing, rather than printing one from memory.

Card shows — from the Showroom wire

The Card Room plays the games; the Showroom tracks the hobby. Its wire watches the card-show calendar:

Darts — 501

A real board, scored by real geometry: the regulation number order, doubles and trebles where they belong, bull worth 25 and the red heart 50. Tap where the dart lands — three a visit, bust and the visit is void, and you must finish on a double. Checkout suggestions appear whenever you're at 170 or under. Across the oche: the house thrower, who aims at treble 20 and the checkout target with about a segment of spread — his model is printed at the table, misses and all. Legs and records (best visit, 180s, legs won) save to your profile.

The checkout table

Every finish from 170 down — the published routes

This is standard darting knowledge, printed in full: the route the pros play for every score that can be finished. Notation: T = treble (the thin middle ring, worth three times the number), D = double (the thin outer ring, worth twice — every leg must END on one), S = single, Bull = the red heart, worth 50 and counts as a double. Seven scores — 159, 162, 163, 165, 166, 168, 169 — have no finish at all; they're the bogey numbers, and the desk above will tell you the setup shot instead when you land on one.

Open the full table (170 → 2)

Routes: the classic Darts501 checkout chart, cross-checked against the CleverDarts chart — both read on October 20, 2026. Where the two disagree on a famous score, the featured route leads and the classic is listed as the alternate. Below 60, plenty of players finish through their own favourite double instead — the table prints the common route, and every route here has been checked dart by dart to be a legal finish.

Billiards — 8-Ball

The clubhouse pool table, with real physics under it: balls collide, cushions give back most of what they take, and pockets swallow what finds the jaws. Drag back on the table to aim and set power, release to shoot. Play the house bot at three levels — his model is printed at the table, aim error and all — pass the screen in pass-and-play, or open an online table and hand a friend the invite code: you break first as Player 1, and every settled rack position syncs to his screen shot by shot. Online tables ride your clubhouse account, so they wait for sign-in and the member database — the table says so plainly when they aren't switched on. Your racks against the bot and against friends online save to your profile, run-outs included.

The Billiards Academy

Stance, bridge, and the two shots everything else stands on

On a real table it starts before the shot: stand side-on to the line, front foot planted toward the target, chin low — and your bridge (the loop of thumb and forefinger the cue slides through) is your front sight: still bridge, straight cue, smooth stroke. On this table your drag is the stroke: drag back steady, release clean. One honest note about this table's physics: it strikes every ball centre-true — there's no spin on it, no top-spin follow or back-spin draw — so the academy teaches the two cue-ball skills the physics models exactly, and that real position play is built on: the stop shot (dead-centre hit, cue ball stops at the contact point) and the tangent line (after a cut shot, the cue ball leaves at a right angle to the object ball's path). Each drill stages the balls ball-in-hand — placed for the lesson — and the table itself judges the result: ball down, no scratch, cue ball home in the ring.

Trivia Night

Trivia Night stands on its own. The host builds a night and picks who's playing: an invite link for this night, one of the host's Trivia Crews (trivia's own standing rosters, with their own trophy shelf), or an open night any member can join. The crew plays together live, or async over a day or a week when nobody can gather — and everything about the night, its records included, lives right here.

Two ways to fill it

Write it, or let Luka build it

  • The host writes his own — his questions, his answer key, his night; the platform runs the timers, the locks, and the scoring
  • Luka builds the whole quiz — the host mixes rounds by theme: football, basketball, baseball, movies (the Screening Room's home turf), the clubhouse itself — or any theme at all, from history to flowers & gardens. House themes draw from the verified bank; anything else Luka drafts and the host checks
  • Built like a real night — rounds with a difficulty curve inside each one (warm-ups first, separators last), an answer key with a source noted for specific factual claims, and tiebreakers held in reserve
  • The host approves it first — always — Luka's questions go to the host to review, edit, and approve before the night. Generated questions can be wrong, so a generated quiz never goes live unreviewed

No host in the room?

The virtual MC

  • Timed questions, locked answers — on a self-serve night, Luka presents each question on a timer; when time expires, answers lock and scoring is automatic. When a human hosts, the same machinery is his toolkit — he advances, it keeps score
  • Leaderboard and standings calls — the board updates as the night goes, and the standings call lands between rounds: who's up, who's chasing, where the movement was — written for the host's mic on a hosted night
  • The result, posted — when the night ends, the final standings and a recap post to the night's own page — and onto the crew's trophy shelf when the night belongs to a crew
  • Async mode — the same quiz stays open over a day or a week; same locking, same scoring, no live MC required

For hosts

Your night, your mic — we do the paperwork

You bring the mic and the crowd. Luka brings the questions, the scoring, the pot book, and the memory — your regulars' records follow your night wherever you host it.

  • Run a season at your venue — start a Host Season on your crew and name the room; weekly nights attach to it, your regulars carry a season record (nights played, wins, total points) computed from the nights themselves, and the finale names a season champion
  • Table cards that work the room — from any night in the season, print a one-page card for the tables: your name up top, your venue, and the code that puts the room on tonight's roster in one tap
  • Your pot book — the paid list and your own Venmo QR live on the night page; members tap "I paid", you confirm. The money itself never touches this site
  • Rematch next week, one tap — clone tonight into next week's night inside the season: fresh questions from the same rounds, the roster carried over, a clean pot book

A trivia pot is the host's business — held off this site, always.

Trivia Night is a host-run contest: the host's night, the host's quiz. So if the crew plays for a pot, the host holds it entirely off this platform and pays the winner directly. The night page carries the host's book — his own Venmo QR and a paid list the roster can see: a member taps "I paid", the host confirms. Those marks are between friends, not payments — and the site never accepts, holds, moves, or takes a cut of trivia money, ever.

That line is drawn by who runs the game. A trivia night is the members' own contest run on house software. The card tables are house-run games — we deal the cards — so they get no pot features at all. Public, open-entry paid trivia is not offered.

Later, if the room earns it

Survivor pools

Pick one winner a week; lose once and you're done. Part of the House games calendar.

Pool formats →

Brackets & squares

A bracket for the big March college tournament and squares for the championship game — seasonal, social, and run inside your group.

Pool formats →

9-ball & pool leagues

The 8-ball table is live now (above). Rotation 9-ball and league nights on the same table join the calendar later.

The 8-ball table ↑

Everything on this page is a friendly game between members. No game here takes a wager, and Pick'em pots — if a group runs one — stay off the site entirely. See Pick'em for exactly how that line works.