Texas Hold It
Texas Hold It Rulebook
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Setup
Each player chooses one of the six cowboys. Yes, friends, now you are cowboys! Choose who will be first dealer.
Take the player urinal cards (the ones with green backs), one fewer than the number of players, and lay them in a row, leaving space between them. Put the cactus card on the left and the snake card on the right. These cards help players sitting across from each other orient themselves. Leave room between the cards for the cowboy cards (they come next).
Illustration caption: "This is what the setup for three players looks like!"
How a Round Works
The dealer (this role passes to the next player clockwise each round) shuffles the cowboy cards and places them in the empty spaces on both sides of the player urinal cards.
Illustration caption: "There you go!"
Now players take turns clockwise, starting with the dealer. On your turn, you may perform one of four actions:
- PEEK: Look at any one of the cowboy cards (so that no one else sees it) and say what is shown on it (or lie!). Remember that instead of "left" and "right" you must say "cactus" and "snake"! The bottom of the cards has arrows and symbols to make this clearer.
- SWAP: Swap places of any two cowboy cards that are not locked.
- PEE: Take a place by putting your cowboy face down on a player urinal card. This is your last action of the round, and after it you can only wait! This action also locks the cowboy cards on both sides of you, so they can no longer be swapped.
- HOLD IT: Put your cowboy face up next to the urinal cards and say "I'll hold it!". This is your last action, and it also triggers the end of the round. From then on, every remaining player on their turn must either PEE or HOLD IT.
Illustration caption: "I see a cowboy who sprayed a stream toward the cactus!"
Scoring
Turn over all of the cowboy cards one at a time.
- Gain +1 DRY POINT if you were able to pee and no one sprayed a stream or gas at you.
- Gain +1 WET POINT for each time someone sprayed a stream or gas at you. If it happened from both sides, gain +2 wet points. [Translator's note: the source line reads "+2 points" here; the sentence and the printed icon make clear these are wet points.]
- Gain +1 WET POINT if you chose to hold it, but there was a free, safe urinal in the game that you could have used. Looks like you wet yourself!
If you chose to hold it and there was no free, safe urinal, you gain NOTHING.
Winning and Losing
If you have three wet points, you are out! Remove one player urinal card from the game. The remaining players continue playing. Eliminated players may still, on their turn, peek and lie about what they have seen on the cards.
If you have three dry points, or you are the last cowboy left in the game, you win!
If two players are tied at three dry points each, continue the game one-on-one until one of them gets more dry points or is knocked out.