Clear, Under or Take

Clear, Under or Take — Player’s Guide · v4.1
Clear, Under or Take v4.1 · studio3607.com
Clear, Under or Take Player's Guide · v4.1 Contents 1About this game & its history Trademark and copyright notice 2Your first game 3Clear, under or take — the three ways a turn ends 4How a turn works Taking the pile Busts Playing matching cards with a Risk card Gambling more than one Risk card in a turn Seeing all the ways to play a rank 5The deal & who leads 6Clearing the pile (clears)Playing several clear cards at once 7Winning 8Strategy 9Coaching Playing the line Coach: Play Automate Player 10Coach styles 11The table & display Player colors Table areas View View Settings Your game is kept if you leave Reset game setup 12Printing this guide 13Optional rules 14Scores & printing 15Glossary Players Level Style Coach style Decks Cards Dealt Clear Card value Card Point Value Card scoring Bust penalty Pile Counts Clear card rank End condition Game End Total Global Setting Set 4+ Card Clears Piles Face Down Pile Card Flip Risk Play Pause between Players Dim non-playable Cards No matching section. Clear, Under or Take — CUT for short — is a shedding / pile-clearing card game (the Palace / Karma family) played against AI. You win a round by shedding all your cards, and you win the game by keeping the lowest cumulative score across rounds. Points are a measure of failure — the higher your score, the closer you are to losing. About this game & its history Clear, Under or Take is an independent digital adaptation of a traditional folk card game — one played with standard 52-card decks in homes across North America and Europe, and usually learned by watching a hand rather than by reading a rulebook. Depending on where you learned it, you may know a similar ruleset as Palace, Karma, Shed, China Hand, Threes, Swish, Sweep, or 10s. The name here describes the three ways a turn resolves rather than borrowing any of them. They are real people, and the styles are theirs. Daryl and Marty are partners, and good friends of ours. They taught my wife Madonna and me to play, and over the past several years the four of us have played hundreds of games. Each of them plays a distinct way, and this game gives those ways a representation. The three archetypes are the three postures every card player recognizes — conservative, balanced and risky — and each one here is drawn from a real player rather than invented for a manual: Daryl is the conservative, Madonna the balanced, Marty the risky. Without them, what I understand about this game would be far thinner than it is — and I would not have had the motivation or the inspiration to write it. My thanks to them is keeping their influence in this game alive. This app plays that traditional ruleset. What it adds is the part a kitchen table cannot: up to seven AI opponents whose skill and playing style you set seat by seat, a coach that explains the reasoning behind each recommendation, and the rule variations described in the rest of this guide — so the version you grew up with is one of the versions you can play here. Trademark and copyright notice Because this game family is so popular, various companies have created physical, commercialized editions with custom decks and specialized rules: SWOOP™ is a registered trademark of Mukanāna Games, creators of a physical, color-coded deck edition. SWIPE is a commercial card game created by PlaySWIPE, featuring custom-valued cards and unique, proprietary rule exceptions. Our game is an independent, standard-deck digital creation. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, sponsored by, or associated in any way with Mukanāna Games, PlaySWIPE, or their respective products. The app's code is licensed under the MIT License; its guide, artwork and in-app writing are licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. Third-party open-source components carry their own licenses, reproduced in full on the app's [Open source licenses](licenses.html) page. © 2026 studio3607 Your first game New to Clear? You can start without reading any further. 1. Press New game. The defaults give you a sensible table: you plus three AI opponents. 2. Leave Coaching on. On your turn, a panel under your cards names the best play and explains why, and highlights the cards it means. 3. Play a card at or below the top of the pile. If nothing plays, you take the pile — that is normal, and it happens to everybody. 4. Shed everything to win the hand: your hand first, then your face-up Board cards, then your blind Risk cards. 5. Lowest score wins, so what costs you is the cards you are caught holding at the end. That is the whole game. Everything below is detail you can pick up as you go: the rules in full, how the coaching works, the optional variants, and a Glossary of every setting. Clear, under or take — the three ways a turn ends The game is named for them, because every turn resolves in exactly one of three ways: Clear — you sweep the pile away and go again. Either you play a clear card (a Joker, or whatever rank is set as the clear card — a 10 by default), or you complete four of a rank on the pile, which is a natural clear and costs you nothing. Under — you play a card at or below the top card, and the pile grows. This is the ordinary case, and "under" includes playing the same rank: the rule is equal-or-lower, not strictly lower. Take — nothing you hold plays, so the pile comes to you. You can also take it deliberately by showing a card higher than the top, which is sometimes the right move. A note on the word "cover". In the Risk Play rule this guide also uses cover for the face-up Board card sitting over its face-down Risk card — a physical position, not a way of resolving a turn. The two senses never appear in the same sentence, but they are different ideas: under is how a play relates to the pile, cover is how a card sits on your own stack. How a turn works The center pile runs on equal-or-lower logic: you must play a card at or below the current pile top, or pick up the whole pile. Ranks run King (high) down to Ace (low); 10s and Jokers sit outside the ranking as clear cards. Play one or more cards of the same rank at once. There is no stock — every card you will ever hold is dealt up front, as a hand plus four Board cards (face-up), each sitting over a face-down Risk card. A Board card and the Risk card beneath it are a stack — you have four. Clear your hand, then your Board, then flip your blind Risk cards to go out. Mis-tapped a play? An Undo last play button reverts your most recent play — one step, not the whole turn — until the next player acts. So a turn ends one of two ways: you play at or below the top, or you take the pile into your hand. Taking it because nothing plays is a bust; taking it deliberately with a higher card is a take. Both are covered next. Taking the pile When you can't (or don't want to) play at or below the pile top, you take the pile by showing a card higher than the top: it is played face-up for everyone to see, then the whole pile — including that card — is swept into your hand. Taking the pile ends your turn, and the next player starts a fresh, empty pile. This counts as a bust (see below), whether you were forced into it or chose it. Busts A bust is picking up the pile — because you can't (or won't) play at or below the top, because a blind Risk flip comes up too high, or because you deliberately showed a card higher than the top to take the pile. All three are busts: the pile comes to your hand and your turn ends. Choosing to bust can still be a good move. Eating a pile worth only a point or two can turn over one of your own face-down Risk cards, or collect cards you want — a couple of Aces to hold for later, say. It is a price you pay on purpose, not a mistake; it is simply still a bust. Clear counts each player's busts: a 💥 tally shows by their name during play, and a per-hand 💥 marker appears in the score tables (with a count when a player busts more than once in a hand). An optional Bust penalty setting adds a flat 25 or 50 points per bust to your round score (see the Glossary) — off by default, so a bust costs you only the cards unless you switch it on. Playing matching cards with a Risk card Clear never spends your matching cards for you. Whenever a Risk card is turned over and plays, you are asked first — however it was turned: with the Flip button, with Play + Risk it, or with Risk pile N part-way through a run. The card you turned over is shown as card 1. Beneath it are the cards you could send with it, each with its own number, split by where it comes from: \| \| \| \|---\|---\| \| From your hand \| costs nothing but the card \| \| From your piles \| each one played uncovers that pile's Risk card \| Then there is one button per choice — Play 1× A, Play 2× A, Play 3× A — and each button wears the color of the last card it plays. So Play 2× is the color of card 2, and you can see exactly which cards are going before you press. Play 1× sends only the card you flipped. The lower numbers spend your hand cards first, because a hand card costs you nothing while a pile card gives up the cover over one of your own Risk cards. If a button would complete a clear, it says so. Add them all to build toward a clear, or send just the one and keep the rest. Gambling more than one Risk card in a turn With Risk Play on, playing a Board card lets you immediately gamble the Risk card underneath it. If your play spends several Board cards, you can gamble each of their Risk cards in turn — you pick which to turn first, see how it lands, and then decide whether to go on. The Risk buttons play the whole set, not just the pile card. If you can play two 9s — one on a pile, one in your hand — the gamble plays both and then turns the Risk card underneath. The button says how many it plays: Play 2× 9 + Risk it. Earlier this offer was tied to how many cards you had selected, so selecting one card hid every multi-card version of it, and with it the whole run of gambles below. Because every card in one play is the same rank, the buttons name the pile rather than the card: Play 2× 9 + Risk pile 2. Each of your piles shows a small numbered badge in a matching color while it is on offer, so you can see which button belongs to which pile. Piles keep their number all round, so you may see 1, 3 and 4 once a pile has been spent. Once a gamble lands, the bar changes to offer the piles you have left, plus Done to stop. Turning a card over can expose another pile's Risk card, and that pile joins the offer too. Any pile clear ends it. If a Risk card turns out to be a clear, the pile clears and the run of gambles is over — nothing carries forward. Seeing all the ways to play a rank When you can play more than one card of the same rank, Clear offers each size rather than making you select them one at a time: Play 1× A, Play 2× A, Play 3× A. Where a set would complete four of a rank the button says so — Play 3× A — clear — because that clears the pile and hands the turn straight back, and it is the option easiest to miss. The deal & who leads The dealer is chosen by a cut at the start of the game: each player cuts a card and the high card deals (Ace low, King high; 10s and Jokers don't count and are re-cut, and a tie re-cuts among the tied players). The player to the dealer's left leads the first play. After that, the winner of each hand — the player who sheds all their cards — deals the next hand, and again the player to their left leads. A small D badge marks the current dealer. Clearing the pile (clears) The pile clears — and you take another turn — three ways: Natural Clear: the fourth card of a rank lands on the pile (in one play or completed across turns). 10: playing a 10 clears the pile immediately. Joker: playing a Joker clears the pile immediately. (With the only-Jokers-clear variant on, 10s stop clearing and become ordinary rank-10 cards; only the Joker and a Natural Clear still clear.) Playing several clear cards at once Clear cards go together. If you hold, say, three 10s and a Joker, you can lay all of them in one sweep rather than playing the 10s and then the Joker separately — they are all clear cards, so the game treats them as one kind of thing. The button reads Play 4× clear, because a set that mixes 10s and Jokers has no single rank to name. Nothing about the outcome changes: the pile clears once and the turn comes back to you either way. What changes is that it happens in one move — which matters, because a hand that looks like several turns' worth of cards can end the round in a single sweep. (With the 10s are clear cards* setting turned off, a 10 is an ordinary rank-10 card and does not sweep with Jokers.)* Winning A hand ends when a player sheds everything; the others score the cards left in their hand, Board, and Risk zones. (Hand and round mean the same thing, here and on screen — one deal, played until somebody goes out.) The game is a series of hands. It ends when a player reaches the Game End Total — or, with the rounds end condition, after a fixed number of hands — and the lowest cumulative score wins. Strategy Clear rewards a handful of habits. The coach applies them for you when it is on — but they are worth knowing either way, and a player who turns coaching off is playing by this list. Lead with your high cards. When a hand starts the pile is empty, so anything is legal. Get the Kings and Queens out early — once the pile descends, those are the cards you are left holding. Go out this turn. If a single play empties your cards — or a clear clears the pile and the rest finishes on the go-again — take it. A win now beats any setup. Keep assets, dump liabilities. Hold your low Aces/2s (flexible), and shed your clear cards (a 25–50 point liability) rather than, say, spending Aces to complete a clear when a 10/Joker could clear instead. Set up your own out. When you are close to finishing, play toward a go-out on your next turn — shed down to a pair you can drop together, and keep a clear to clear a bad pile so you are not blocked. Hinder the player on your left. When the seat that plays right after you is about to go out, play a low card so they must match-or-lower or pick the pile up — don't hand them an easy finish. Shed your high cards while you can. Play the highest card the pile allows — the pile plays descending, so a card you don't get out now can be stranded once the top drops below it. Keep a low floor. Hold onto Aces and 2s; a low card follows almost any pile later, so they are your escape from being forced to pick up. Hold clears as a way out. Save 10s and Jokers for when nothing else is legal — a clear clears the pile and gives you another turn. Dump a clear before an opponent goes out. A 10 or Joker caught in your hand at the end of a round costs 25–50 points, so shed it once someone is about to go out. Take the pile deliberately. Playing a card higher than the top sweeps the pile into your hand — situational, but it can grab a clear card or reset a bad pile. Time your Risk flips. A flipped Risk card plays blind; flip when the pile is low so a bad card is cheap. Coaching Turn Coaching on (setup) to get contextual strategy hints on your turn, shown in a shaded, collapsible panel below your cards. How many hints you see is set by your Level: Average shows the most, Experienced shows one, Expert shows none. The switch turns them off entirely regardless of level. The advice is also pitched at your Level — Average gets the current-turn play; Experienced and Expert add setup thinking. A Coach style setting — Rock, Balanced (default), or Gambler — changes what the coach recommends, not merely how it words it; you can switch it live in the Coaching panel to compare all three on the same hand. The styles are playing personalities, not difficulty levels — see Coach styles below, and Coach style in the Glossary. Level, Style and Coach style are three different settings, and they are easy to confuse: \| Setting \| The question it answers \| \|---\|---\| \| Level \| How well does this seat play? (For your own seat it also sets how much coaching you see.) \| \| Style \| What is this seat trying to do? \| \| Coach style \| Whose advice am I being shown? \| Each has its own Glossary entry, and Coach styles below describes the three personalities in full. Each hint is the concrete best move for your exact hand, chosen by a move-value engine (the same one the AI plays, so the coach can't tell you one thing and the AI do another). It weighs, in order: go out this turn if you can, then shed the most (a Q-triple beats a lone K; a low pair beats a lone lower card), then keep your assets and dump your liabilities, then pile control. Those priorities are the Strategy list above — the coach is applying it to your exact cards, one turn at a time. The AI opponents play these same lines, sharper at higher Levels (Experienced and Expert, at any table size — 1-on-1 included): they race to their own out when it's close, dump clears when a player is down to one or two cards so they aren't caught with the points, and play low to hinder the player on their left when that player is about to go out. Expert acts on thinner odds than Experienced; Average keeps a looser, more beatable line. Playing the line Most advice is about the card in front of you: shed the high one, complete the clear, take the pile. Sometimes the best play is not the biggest one — a smaller shed now leaves you a hand that finishes sooner. When the coach spots that, it says so plainly and tells you the plan it has in mind: > Play your J — it sheds less right now, but it sets up your next turns: your 2 7s, then your 2 5s. That is playing the line: choosing the move for the turns that follow it rather than for this turn alone. The coach only says this when the immediate play and the longer view genuinely disagree — where the obvious play is also the best one, it just tells you to make it. Two honest limits, so the advice is easy to weigh: It reads your own cards, not anyone else's. Opponents' hands and face-down Risk cards are hidden, so the plan assumes the pile comes back to you at a middling rank — neither a cleared table nor an impossible one. If the pile comes back high, the line may not be available. It never overrides a sure thing. A play that wins the round, completes a clear, or goes out keeps its own advice. Reading ahead only speaks where the answer was genuinely arguable. Expert looks the furthest ahead, Experienced one turn, and Average plays the current turn only — which is part of what makes the levels feel different to play against. Coach: Play With Coaching on, the coach's recommended card(s) are highlighted in your hand, and a green Coach: Play … button (inside the Coaching panel, labeled with the actual play, e.g. Coach: Play 3) plays exactly that line in one tap. The coach's cards are also treated as the default selection, so the normal Play button is active on them too — you can play the recommendation from either button without re-selecting. Prefer your own play? Select any other card and it takes over; collapsing the Coaching panel hides the Coach button. The button always plays the same line the highlight shows. Automate Player Turn on Automate Player (setup, or the 🤖 toggle below your cards) to let the coach play your turns for you — useful for watching a game play out or auto-piloting a stretch. While it is on, an automated badge shows at the top of the play area and each hand it played is marked 🤖 in the score log. It keeps playing your seat until you select a card or press ESC (or toggle it off), which hands control straight back to you. Coach styles The coaching in Clear is not a set of general card-game maxims. Clear's decisions have no real equivalent elsewhere — a clear card is both an escape hatch and a liability you can be caught holding, a Risk card is a blind gamble you choose the moment for, and the pile you decline to clear is the pile you may have to pick up. So the guidance was built and refined from real game play and from simulation, and that work drove the underlying guidance engine itself — the rules each style uses to pick its move, not merely the words it uses to explain one. Choosing a style changes what the coach recommends, not how it phrases the recommendation. The three coaches have names — Daryl, Madonna and Marty. Same rules, same game, different temperament. Which one you pick changes only what you are told; it never changes how the game plays or how the other seats play. The three coaches are named after real players, and the styles are theirs — see [About this game & its history](#about-this-game-its-history). Each coach is a single principle carried through every decision. The principle is what produces the advice — read the row and you can predict what that coach will tell you before he or she says it. \| Coach \| Defining principle \| What they recommend \| What they accept in return \| \|---\|---\|---\|---\| \| Daryl — plays it safe \| Protect the position \| Take the solid group play; keep flexible low cards; hold a clear as insurance; flip only into an empty pile \| Fewer chances taken, so fewer rewards collected — she wins on cheap rounds, not on bold ones \| \| Madonna — plays balanced \| None, deliberately \| The straightforward value play, drawing on both the others \| She borrows their weaknesses along with their strengths \| \| Marty — plays the risk \| Act to remove risk \| Flip on an empty or high pile; unload a high card before he's caught with it; spend a spare clear to seize the board \| The biggest losses when a gamble misses \| Switch coaches mid-hand from the Coaching panel to see the same position argued three ways. The description of whoever you have chosen sits under the picker, so the name is never shown without saying what it means. Your Coach and your Style are different settings, and they are independent. The coach is who advises you. Your Style — set per player in the Player table, and still Rock, Balanced or Gambler — is how that seat plays. You can play Rock and still ask Marty what he would do. Daryl plays a style, not a winning style. She plays conservatively on purpose, and if you don't take risks there are fewer rewards to collect. He goes out about as often as anyone — what costs him is what he is left holding on the rounds he doesn't win. Going out often is not the same as going out cheaply. Gambler pays for its position and collects on it. It takes the flips and spends the clears, which wins boards and loses big when a gamble misses. Balanced has no defining principle, and that is what defines it. Rock commits to low variance, Gambler commits to pressure; Balanced commits to neither, so it borrows from both — the good and the bad. It takes enough risk to be caught with the pile, without taking enough to be paid for it. That is the honest cost of the middle road, and it is worth knowing before you choose: Balanced is the most neutral style to learn from, because it never pushes you far in either direction, and the least pointed to win with. What this means for you. Pick the style that matches how you want to play, not the one that wins most. Switch styles live in the Coaching panel to see all three read the same hand — that comparison, on your own cards, is the fastest way to understand what each one values. The table & display How the game is drawn, and how you can adjust it. None of this changes the rules. Player colors Every seat is assigned its own color (set in the player list on the setup screen — the dropdown only offers colors no one else has taken). That color outlines the player's seat, their hand and stack cards, and — importantly — the cards they played onto the pile. The color is bold and glowing on that player's turn and muted otherwise. Because each pile card keeps the color of whoever played it, you can always see whose card is on top — the current player isn't credited with a card an earlier player laid down. Table areas The play screen is laid out in named regions: Title Bar — the top strip: title, Guide/Scores links, theme toggle, New game. Play Bar — the green panel: whose turn it is, the latest action, the first-hand cut, and the current table layout (Table or Stacked). Sizing lives in View Settings, in the header. Turn Status — within the Play Bar: whose turn and the last play. Opponent Seats — each opponent's cards, on the radial arc or the stacked list. The Pile — the center band of played cards (the current run). Your Area — your seat: your Board stacks, your hand, the Coaching panel, and your play buttons. A Legend at the bottom of the play screen explains the on-card icons (💥 Bust · 🃏 Pile · 🤖 Automated · S Clear · D Dealer), each linking to its Guide section. 🃏 marks a card that came from the pile — picked up on a bust or a take — rather than one you were dealt. View Auto (the default) picks the layout that fits and keeps picking it. Narrow the window, add a fifth player, open the game on a phone — it re-resolves on its own, every time, and you never have to open View Settings to fix it. If the table view would not fit the seats across the width, Auto simply uses the stacked list instead of showing you an overlapping table. Table and Stacked force the choice and are respected as a choice. Force Table where it does not fit and the game says so, and offers to switch — it will not override you, because you asked for it deliberately. View Settings View Settings — the link in the header, next to Guide and Scores — is where everything about how Clear looks is set. Nothing here changes the game; it only adjusts how the table is drawn, and your choices are kept on your device, so size the app once and it opens that way next time. Clear draws the table inside a window rather than stretching it across the full browser, because content spread over a very wide screen is harder to read, not easier. The window is never wider than your browser, and it sits to the left so the space it doesn't need stays in one place instead of being split down both sides. View sets the table layout: Auto — the arc when your window can show a legible card, the stacked list when it cannot. Table — always the radial arc, with the opponents seated around it. Stacked — always the list, each opponent on their own row. On a narrow screen this is the one that works: the opponents scroll in their own band so the pile and your hand stay in view instead of being pushed off the bottom. Then six sizes. Each moves only its own thing — the four card and text sizes are a number of pixels; the two window widths default to auto: Setup window and Play window — how wide the app is on the setup screen and during play. Both are auto by default, which means the app takes the whole screen and scales its contents to fit — on a tablet the page grows to meet the edge rather than stopping short and leaving a band down one side. Set either to a pixel width if you would rather pin it; auto returns when you clear it. A window narrower than the app's natural width wraps rather than shrinking, so text never gets smaller than it should be on a phone. Card size — an opponent's card. Pile — a card in the pile. Your cards — the cards in your hand. Text — the size of the writing. That one-control-one-thing rule is the important part. Change Card size and your own hand does not move; change Your cards and the opponents do not. Earlier versions tied them together — one size governed the whole table and the others were multiples of it — which meant you could not ask for larger opponent cards without also enlarging your own hand. The number you set is the size you get. If you choose cards too large for your window, the page scrolls rather than quietly overriding you. Nothing here can put the game into an unusable state: Back to defaults returns every control to its shipped value and forgets what was saved. Not sure what a setting will do? Move it and watch — every change applies immediately, and you can always come back with Back to defaults. Your game is kept if you leave A game in progress is saved as you play, so closing the tab, refreshing, or following a link out to this guide and coming back does not lose it — you return to the same hands, the same pile and the same turn. It is saved between turns rather than in the middle of one, so if you leave part-way through a run of Risk gambles you come back to the start of that turn. Opening the app asks you first. If a game is waiting, you get Continue or Start new rather than being dropped straight back into it. Continue names what it would restore — Continue — 4 players, round 3 — because a saved game brings its own seat count and rules with it, and coming back to a different table than you expected is a poor surprise. The prompt only appears when there is genuinely something to resume; with no saved game you go straight to the setup screen. Choosing Start new does not delete the saved game. It stays until a new game actually deals, so if you pick Start new and then change your mind, close the app and open it again — the offer is still there. The save is dropped when the game finishes, and it is only reused if your settings still match: a saved game is never reopened under different rules. Finished games are kept separately in Scores. Reset game setup Reset game setup sits on the start page, beside Deal & play — on the page it resets. Returns the setup screen to its defaults: player names, colors, levels, per-seat styles, the coach style, and every rule variant. It deliberately leaves three things alone — your display settings, your Light/Dark choice, and your score history. Those are yours, not part of a game setup. If a game is in progress it asks first, then ends that game and returns you to setup. It has to: the board in front of you was dealt under the old settings, so leaving it running would show you a game that no longer matches the screen that produced it. Printing this guide The Guide link opens this document in its own browser tab, so you can read it beside the game rather than instead of it. The contents sits in a column down the left and stays put as you scroll, marking the section you are reading. Search the guide at the top of it filters the contents as you type — `Esc` clears, `Enter` jumps to the first match. At the top right there is a Print / Save as PDF button — choose your printer, or pick Save as PDF as the destination to keep a copy. The page carries a one-inch margin on all four sides, on screen and on paper, so what you read matches what you print. The guide opens in the same window as the game — no wider than the start page, aligned to the left — so it reads as part of the app rather than a separate site. The printed copy is laid out for paper rather than screen. Every page carries a header with the guide’s name and version, a footer with the site address, and a page number, so a printout that gets separated can be put back in order. Each numbered section starts on a fresh page, and the contents prints as its own first page. The search box and the Print button are dropped, and it prints black on white whatever color scheme you read in. Every printed page carries a header with the guide’s name and version, a footer with the site address, and a page number — “Page 4 of 30” — so a printout that gets separated can be put back in order. The one-inch margin holds on every page, not just the first. Optional rules Clear plays the standard rules out of the box. Everything below is optional, independent of the USA / Canada set, and can be mixed freely. Two change how a turn plays: Risk Play — playing a Board card lets you immediately gamble the face-down Risk card beneath it, the same turn. Clear card (besides Jokers) — 10 by default. Set it to None for the only-Jokers variant, or pick any other rank to make that rank the clear card instead. The rest change the shape of the game rather than the turn: End condition, Game End Total, 4+ Card Clears, Piles Face Down, Pile Card Flip, Bust penalty, Card scoring, Pile Counts, Cards Dealt and Decks. Every one of them has a Glossary entry with the full rule. This list is the map; the Glossary is the detail. Scores & printing The Scores link in the header (on every screen) opens a panel with two parts: This game — the current game's hand-by-hand table with running totals — and Games played — every finished game saved on this device. Each finished game shows a one-line summary (all players + final scores, winner marked); expand it (▸) to see its full hand-by-hand table. Tick the games you want (or Select all), then Print selected — a clean printable sheet you can send to your printer or Save as PDF — or Delete selected to clear them from the log. Glossary Players How many seats are dealt in, from 2 to 8. You take the first seat; the others are AI opponents. More players pulls in more decks and puts more cards in play. Level Set per seat. For an opponent, Level sets how sharply that AI plays. For your own seat, Level tunes how much in-game coaching you get: Average shows the most hints, Experienced one, Expert none (see the Coaching section). Average — The loosest play: explores more, doesn't always take the disciplined line, and weighs only the turn in front of it. Pick it for an easier opponent, or — for yourself — if you're new and will want the most guidance once coaching lands. Experienced — Steady, sensible play without the sharpest edges, looking one turn past the current one. The balanced middle, and the default. Pick it once you know the flow of a round. Expert — The disciplined line: sheds high cards early while the pile is high, holds clear cards (10s and Jokers) as a way out, and dumps them on a player about to go out. It also looks the furthest ahead, weighing the hand a play would leave it over its next couple of turns rather than just the turn in front of it (see Playing the line). Pick it for the toughest opponents, or for yourself if you want little to no coaching. Style Set per player, including you — how that player plays. Rock, Balanced or Gambler. These are not the coach's names: the seats keep Rock / Balanced / Gambler, while the coaches are Daryl, Madonna and Marty. The principles behind them are the same three, described in Coach styles, but the settings are separate — you can play Rock and still ask Marty what he would do. It is independent of Level: Style is what a player is trying to do, Level is how consistently they do it. An Average Gambler and an Expert Gambler want the same things; the Expert just executes more reliably. Give each opponent a different Style and a four-player table becomes four distinct players rather than four copies at different accuracy settings. Your own Style is not tied to Coach style. You can play Rock and ask the Gambler coach what it would do — seeing the aggressive line is not the same as taking it, and whether you follow the advice is always your call. The one place the two meet is Automate Player, which plays your Style, not the coach's; to play the coach's line, use Coach: Play, which is a deliberate act each time. Coach style Sets whose advice you are shown (only when Coaching is on): Daryl (plays it safe), Madonna (plays balanced, and the default) or Marty (plays the risk). Switch it live in the Coaching panel to compare coaches on the same hand — the fastest way to see what each one values. The chosen coach's description sits under the picker. This is separate from your own Style: asking a style for its opinion does not commit you to playing that way. Coach styles is the full description of the three — what each values and what it accepts in return. This entry deliberately does not repeat it, so the two can never drift apart. Decks How many standard 54-card decks (two Jokers each) are shuffled together. Auto scales the count with the number of players — 2 decks for 2–3 players, 3 for 4, then one more deck per two extra players (4,4 for 5–6; 5 for 7–8). Fewer decks concentrate the 10s and Jokers, so almost every clear card ends up in play; more decks dilute them and add variety. Cards Dealt The total number of cards each player is dealt up front — 19 or 20. Those split into a hand plus four Board cards over four Risk cards. Because there is no stock, this is every card you will have for the round. Clear Card value A 10 or Joker — the most powerful card in the game. It clears the pile and grants an immediate extra turn. The setting controls the penalty each clear card costs (25 or 50) if you are caught holding it when a round ends, so hoarding them is a high-stakes gamble. Card Point Value What each leftover card is worth when a hand ends. Clear cards (10s and/or Jokers, per the "10s are clear cards" setting) are always the Clear Card value (25 or 50); J, Q, K = 10 (and a 10 that is an ordinary card = 10). The A–9 cards depend on the Card scoring setting: Rank value (default): A = 1, 2–9 = face value (a 7 is 7 points). This is the standard rule. A–9 = 5: every A–9 counts a flat 5 — a simpler count. Lowest total wins, so these are the points you want to avoid holding. Card scoring The setting that chooses how leftover A–9 cards score: Rank value (default — A = 1, 2–9 = face value) or A–9 = 5 (a flat 5 each). Nothing else changes — Card Point Value above has the full table. The coach's “(N pts)” advice and the optional Pile Counts total both follow whichever you pick. Bust penalty An optional scoring variant (off by default). Set to 25 or 50 to take that many points as a flat penalty for each bust — each time you pick up the pile — during a round. It applies to everyone, including the round's winner, so a player who went out with zero card points can still end a round ahead of the field if they busted along the way. The round-over table shows the bust add on its own line (e.g. `💥×2 +50`). Pile Counts An optional readout (off by default). When on, the pile shows its card count and total point value above it during play — the total uses the active Card scoring setting, so you can see at a glance how costly the pile is to pick up. Clear card rank On by default: 10s clear the pile like Jokers. Turn it off for the only-Jokers-clear variant — 10s become ordinary rank-10 cards, ordered between 9 and Jack, and only Jokers (and a four-of-a-kind Natural Clear) clear the pile. End condition How the game ends. Score total: play until a player's running total reaches the Game End Total. After N rounds: play a fixed number of rounds, then stop. Either way, the player with the lowest cumulative total wins. Game End Total The cumulative score that ends the game (300 or 500) when the end condition is Score total. As soon as any player's running total reaches it, the game stops and the lowest total wins. Global Setting Set A one-pick ready-made set: USA or Canada. Choosing one fills in the cards per player, clear-card value, game end total, and the 4-of-a-kind rule together. You can still fine-tune any individual setting afterward. About the names. The names are a joke, and an affectionate one. I ran into these variations playing with Canadian friends, and it became the standing question before we started: are we playing Canadian or USA rules? That question is this setting. The rules themselves are not a joke. Neither set is better — they are simply different, and both are good games. That is exactly why both are here: the Canadian variant changes how a hand feels, not how good it is, and a version of Clear that shipped only one of them would be poorer for it. The sets are named after where I met the rules, not after any official standard. Try both, then ask the question before you deal. USA and Canada only SET VALUES — they do not lock them. Picking one fills in the four rules it covers (Cards Dealt, Clear Card value, Game End Total, and 4+ Card Clears), and you are free to change any of them afterwards. When you do, the picker reads Custom, because it would be misleading for it to keep saying "USA" while you are playing one of Canada's rules. Set them back and it reads USA or Canada again on its own. Custom is a description, not a choice — you cannot select it, because selecting it would mean "change nothing". 4+ Card Clears The 4-of-a-kind rule, as its own switch. On (the Canada rule): more than four of the same rank can clear together in one clear — lay all your matching cards at once, past four, and they all clear (a clear, then play again). Off (the USA rule): a clear caps at the fourth card; any extra same-rank cards stay in front of you and become your next play. This is independent of the USA / Canada set, so you can run, say, USA rules with 4+ card clears turned on. Piles Face Down A layout variant (default off). Your 4 stacks are dealt with both cards face-down instead of a face-up Board card over a face-down Risk card — so all 8 table cards are blind. On your turn you may play a stack's top card blind: it plays if legal, or you pick up the pile if it is too high. Once the top is gone, the card beneath becomes the new (still face-down) top. You may play a pile card anytime on your turn, even with cards in hand. A bigger gamble than the standard table. Selecting a pile card. Tap a face-down top to select it, then press Play — the same select-then-play you use for a card in your hand. You do not learn the rank first; that blindness is the whole point of this setting. What you choose is which stack to commit to. The per-stack Flip button does the same thing in one tap. On an empty pile, this is not a gamble at all. Any card is legal on an empty pile, so a blind play always lands, and you keep the turn. The coach says so rather than warning you about a risk that cannot happen. Pile Card Flip A variant (default off) that lets you spend a whole turn to flip a face-down top pile card face-up instead of gambling it — the card stays on the pile as a known card you can play on a later turn. It works on any exposed face-down top (Piles-Face-Down cards, or a Risk card once its cover is gone). Trades a turn to remove the guesswork. When is it worth the turn? Two different reasons, and the coach now names both. The low-risk one: a blind flip can force you to pick the pile up, so on a pile that is expensive to take, paying a turn to see the card first is cheaper than gambling it. On a cheap pile — a couple of cards — a failed flip costs almost nothing, so gambling is the better use of the turn. The strategic one: turning a card face-up leaves it on the pile as a known card, so you can play it deliberately on a later turn instead of hoping. Turning up is positioning, not only caution. Risk Play An optional rule. When it is on, playing a Board card lets you immediately gamble the face-down Risk card paired beneath it, the same turn — flip it blind: play on if it is legal, pick up the pile if it is too high. (With Piles Face Down there is no face-up Board to play, so Risk Play has no effect until a card is turned up via Pile Card Flip.) Pause between Players Pacing between turns. Auto plays each opponent's turn automatically after a short delay; Step (the default) pauses after every player so you tap Next to advance — handy for following the action closely. In Step mode, a clear that clears the pile (marked with an S badge) and a bust (a pile pickup) also pause with a Continue button — the clear pause even shows the cards that were swept before the pile clears, so you see exactly what happened before play moves on. Dim non-playable Cards When on, cards you can't legally play right now are dimmed, so the cards you can play stand out at a glance. Generated from description-v4.1.md.

Clear, Under or Take — CUT for short — is a shedding / pile-clearing card game (the Palace / Karma family) played against AI. You win a round by shedding all your cards, and you win the game by keeping the lowest cumulative score across rounds. Points are a measure of failure — the higher your score, the closer you are to losing.

About this game & its history

Clear, Under or Take is an independent digital adaptation of a traditional folk card game — one played with standard 52-card decks in homes across North America and Europe, and usually learned by watching a hand rather than by reading a rulebook. Depending on where you learned it, you may know a similar ruleset as Palace, Karma, Shed, China Hand, Threes, Swish, Sweep, or 10s. The name here describes the three ways a turn resolves rather than borrowing any of them.

They are real people, and the styles are theirs. Daryl and Marty are partners, and good friends of ours. They taught my wife Madonna and me to play, and over the past several years the four of us have played hundreds of games. Each of them plays a distinct way, and this game gives those ways a representation. The three archetypes are the three postures every card player recognizes — conservative, balanced and risky — and each one here is drawn from a real player rather than invented for a manual: Daryl is the conservative, Madonna the balanced, Marty the risky. Without them, what I understand about this game would be far thinner than it is — and I would not have had the motivation or the inspiration to write it. My thanks to them is keeping their influence in this game alive.

This app plays that traditional ruleset. What it adds is the part a kitchen table cannot: up to seven AI opponents whose skill and playing style you set seat by seat, a coach that explains the reasoning behind each recommendation, and the rule variations described in the rest of this guide — so the version you grew up with is one of the versions you can play here.

Trademark and copyright notice

Because this game family is so popular, various companies have created physical, commercialized editions with custom decks and specialized rules:

SWOOP™ is a registered trademark of Mukanāna Games, creators of a physical, color-coded deck

edition.

SWIPE is a commercial card game created by PlaySWIPE, featuring custom-valued cards and unique,

proprietary rule exceptions.

Our game is an independent, standard-deck digital creation. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, sponsored by, or associated in any way with Mukanāna Games, PlaySWIPE, or their respective products.

The app's code is licensed under the MIT License; its guide, artwork and in-app writing are licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. Third-party open-source components carry their own licenses, reproduced in full on the app's [Open source licenses](licenses.html) page.

Your first game

New to Clear? You can start without reading any further.

1. Press New game. The defaults give you a sensible table: you plus three AI opponents. 2. Leave Coaching on. On your turn, a panel under your cards names the best play and explains why, and highlights the cards it means. 3. Play a card at or below the top of the pile. If nothing plays, you take the pile — that is normal, and it happens to everybody. 4. Shed everything to win the hand: your hand first, then your face-up Board cards, then your blind Risk cards. 5. Lowest score wins, so what costs you is the cards you are caught holding at the end.

That is the whole game. Everything below is detail you can pick up as you go: the rules in full, how the coaching works, the optional variants, and a Glossary of every setting.

Clear, under or take — the three ways a turn ends

The game is named for them, because every turn resolves in exactly one of three ways:

Clear — you sweep the pile away and go again. Either you play a clear card (a Joker, or

whatever rank is set as the clear card — a 10 by default), or you complete four of a rank on the pile, which is a natural clear and costs you nothing.

Under — you play a card at or below the top card, and the pile grows. This is the ordinary

case, and "under" includes playing the *same* rank: the rule is equal-or-lower, not strictly lower.

Take — nothing you hold plays, so the pile comes to you. You can also take it deliberately by

showing a card higher than the top, which is sometimes the right move.

A note on the word "cover". In the Risk Play rule this guide also uses *cover* for the face-up Board card sitting over its face-down Risk card — a physical position, not a way of resolving a turn. The two senses never appear in the same sentence, but they are different ideas: *under* is how a play relates to the pile, *cover* is how a card sits on your own stack.

How a turn works

The center pile runs on equal-or-lower logic: you must play a card at or below the current pile top, or pick up the whole pile. Ranks run King (high) down to Ace (low); 10s and Jokers sit outside the ranking as clear cards. Play one or more cards of the same rank at once.

There is no stock — every card you will ever hold is dealt up front, as a hand plus four Board cards (face-up), each sitting over a face-down Risk card. A Board card and the Risk card beneath it are a stack — you have four. Clear your hand, then your Board, then flip your blind Risk cards to go out. Mis-tapped a play? An Undo last play button reverts your most recent play — one step, not the whole turn — until the next player acts.

So a turn ends one of two ways: you play at or below the top, or you take the pile into your hand. Taking it because nothing plays is a bust; taking it deliberately with a higher card is a take. Both are covered next.

Taking the pile

When you can't (or don't want to) play at or below the pile top, you take the pile by showing a card higher than the top: it is played face-up for everyone to see, then the whole pile — including that card — is swept into your hand. Taking the pile ends your turn, and the next player starts a fresh, empty pile. This counts as a bust (see below), whether you were forced into it or chose it.

Busts

A bust is picking up the pile — because you can't (or won't) play at or below the top, because a blind Risk flip comes up too high, or because you deliberately showed a card higher than the top to take the pile. All three are busts: the pile comes to your hand and your turn ends.

Choosing to bust can still be a good move. Eating a pile worth only a point or two can turn over one of your own face-down Risk cards, or collect cards you want — a couple of Aces to hold for later, say. It is a price you pay on purpose, not a mistake; it is simply still a bust.

Clear counts each player's busts: a 💥 tally shows by their name during play, and a per-hand 💥 marker appears in the score tables (with a count when a player busts more than once in a hand). An optional Bust penalty setting adds a flat 25 or 50 points per bust to your round score (see the Glossary) — off by default, so a bust costs you only the cards unless you switch it on.

Playing matching cards with a Risk card

Clear never spends your matching cards for you. Whenever a Risk card is turned over and plays, you are asked first — however it was turned: with the Flip button, with Play + Risk it, or with Risk pile N part-way through a run.

The card you turned over is shown as card 1. Beneath it are the cards you *could* send with it, each with its own number, split by where it comes from:

| | | |---|---| | From your hand | costs nothing but the card | | From your piles | each one played uncovers that pile's Risk card |

Then there is one button per choice — Play 1× A, Play 2× A, Play 3× A — and each button wears the color of the last card it plays. So Play 2× is the color of card 2, and you can see exactly which cards are going before you press. Play 1× sends only the card you flipped.

The lower numbers spend your hand cards first, because a hand card costs you nothing while a pile card gives up the cover over one of your own Risk cards. If a button would complete a clear, it says so.

Add them all to build toward a clear, or send just the one and keep the rest.

Gambling more than one Risk card in a turn

With Risk Play on, playing a Board card lets you immediately gamble the Risk card underneath it. If your play spends several Board cards, you can gamble each of their Risk cards in turn — you pick which to turn first, see how it lands, and then decide whether to go on.

The Risk buttons play the whole set, not just the pile card. If you can play two 9s — one on a pile, one in your hand — the gamble plays both and then turns the Risk card underneath. The button says how many it plays: Play 2× 9 + Risk it. Earlier this offer was tied to how many cards you had selected, so selecting one card hid every multi-card version of it, and with it the whole run of gambles below.

Because every card in one play is the same rank, the buttons name the pile rather than the card: Play 2× 9 + Risk pile 2. Each of your piles shows a small numbered badge in a matching color while it is on offer, so you can see which button belongs to which pile. Piles keep their number all round, so you may see 1, 3 and 4 once a pile has been spent.

Once a gamble lands, the bar changes to offer the piles you have left, plus Done to stop. Turning a card over can expose another pile's Risk card, and that pile joins the offer too.

Any pile clear ends it. If a Risk card turns out to be a clear, the pile clears and the run of gambles is over — nothing carries forward.

Seeing all the ways to play a rank

When you can play more than one card of the same rank, Clear offers each size rather than making you select them one at a time: Play 1× A, Play 2× A, Play 3× A. Where a set would complete four of a rank the button says so — Play 3× A — clear — because that clears the pile and hands the turn straight back, and it is the option easiest to miss.

The deal & who leads

The dealer is chosen by a cut at the start of the game: each player cuts a card and the high card deals (Ace low, King high; 10s and Jokers don't count and are re-cut, and a tie re-cuts among the tied players). The player to the dealer's left leads the first play.

After that, the winner of each hand — the player who sheds all their cards — deals the next hand, and again the player to their left leads. A small D badge marks the current dealer.

Clearing the pile (clears)

The pile clears — and you take another turn — three ways:

Natural Clear: the fourth card of a rank lands on the pile (in one play or completed

across turns).

10: playing a 10 clears the pile immediately.
Joker: playing a Joker clears the pile immediately.

(With the only-Jokers-clear variant on, 10s stop clearing and become ordinary rank-10 cards; only the Joker and a Natural Clear still clear.)

Playing several clear cards at once

Clear cards go together. If you hold, say, three 10s and a Joker, you can lay all of them in one sweep rather than playing the 10s and then the Joker separately — they are all clear cards, so the game treats them as one kind of thing. The button reads Play 4× clear, because a set that mixes 10s and Jokers has no single rank to name.

Nothing about the outcome changes: the pile clears once and the turn comes back to you either way. What changes is that it happens in one move — which matters, because a hand that looks like several turns' worth of cards can end the round in a single sweep.

*(With the 10s are clear cards setting turned off, a 10 is an ordinary rank-10 card and does not sweep with Jokers.)*

Winning

A hand ends when a player sheds everything; the others score the cards left in their hand, Board, and Risk zones. (Hand and round mean the same thing, here and on screen — one deal, played until somebody goes out.)

The game is a series of hands. It ends when a player reaches the Game End Total — or, with the rounds end condition, after a fixed number of hands — and the lowest cumulative score wins.

Strategy

Clear rewards a handful of habits. The coach applies them for you when it is on — but they are worth knowing either way, and a player who turns coaching off is playing by this list.

Lead with your high cards. When a hand starts the pile is empty, so anything is legal. Get the

Kings and Queens out early — once the pile descends, those are the cards you are left holding.

Go out this turn. If a single play empties your cards — or a clear clears the pile and the

rest finishes on the go-again — take it. A win now beats any setup.

Keep assets, dump liabilities. Hold your low Aces/2s (flexible), and shed your **clear

cards** (a 25–50 point liability) rather than, say, spending Aces to complete a clear when a 10/Joker could clear instead.

Set up your own out. When you are close to finishing, play toward a go-out on your next

turn — shed down to a pair you can drop together, and keep a clear to clear a bad pile so you are not blocked.

Hinder the player on your left. When the seat that plays right after you is about to go out,

play a low card so they must match-or-lower or pick the pile up — don't hand them an easy finish.

Shed your high cards while you can. Play the highest card the pile allows — the pile plays

descending, so a card you don't get out now can be stranded once the top drops below it.

Keep a low floor. Hold onto Aces and 2s; a low card follows almost any pile later, so

they are your escape from being forced to pick up.

Hold clears as a way out. Save 10s and Jokers for when nothing else is legal —

a clear clears the pile and gives you another turn.

Dump a clear before an opponent goes out. A 10 or Joker caught in your hand at the end

of a round costs 25–50 points, so shed it once someone is about to go out.

Take the pile deliberately. Playing a card higher than the top sweeps the pile into your

hand — situational, but it can grab a clear card or reset a bad pile.

Time your Risk flips. A flipped Risk card plays blind; flip when the pile is low so a bad

card is cheap.

Coaching

Turn Coaching on (setup) to get contextual strategy hints on your turn, shown in a shaded, collapsible panel below your cards. How many hints you see is set by your Level: Average shows the most, Experienced shows one, Expert shows none. The switch turns them off entirely regardless of level. The advice is also pitched at your Level — Average gets the current-turn play; Experienced and Expert add setup thinking.

A Coach style setting — Rock, Balanced (default), or Gambler — changes what the coach recommends, not merely how it words it; you can switch it live in the Coaching panel to compare all three on the same hand. The styles are playing personalities, not difficulty levels — see Coach styles below, and Coach style in the Glossary.

Level, Style and Coach style are three different settings, and they are easy to confuse:

| Setting | The question it answers | |---|---| | Level | How well does this seat play? (For your own seat it also sets how much coaching you see.) | | Style | What is this seat *trying* to do? | | Coach style | Whose advice am I being shown? |

Each has its own Glossary entry, and Coach styles below describes the three personalities in full.

Each hint is the concrete best move for your exact hand, chosen by a move-value engine (the same one the AI plays, so the coach can't tell you one thing and the AI do another). It weighs, in order: go out this turn if you can, then shed the most (a Q-triple beats a lone K; a low pair beats a lone lower card), then keep your assets and dump your liabilities, then pile control. Those priorities are the Strategy list above — the coach is applying it to your exact cards, one turn at a time.

The AI opponents play these same lines, sharper at higher Levels (Experienced and Expert, at any table size — 1-on-1 included): they race to their own out when it's close, dump clears when a player is down to one or two cards so they aren't caught with the points, and play low to hinder the player on their left when that player is about to go out. Expert acts on thinner odds than Experienced; Average keeps a looser, more beatable line.

Playing the line

Most advice is about the card in front of you: shed the high one, complete the clear, take the pile. Sometimes the best play is not the biggest one — a smaller shed now leaves you a hand that finishes sooner. When the coach spots that, it says so plainly and tells you the plan it has in mind:

> *Play your J — it sheds less right now, but it sets up your next turns: your 2 7s, then your 2 5s.*

That is playing the line: choosing the move for the turns that follow it rather than for this turn alone. The coach only says this when the immediate play and the longer view genuinely disagree — where the obvious play is also the best one, it just tells you to make it.

Two honest limits, so the advice is easy to weigh:

It reads your own cards, not anyone else's. Opponents' hands and face-down Risk cards are hidden,

so the plan assumes the pile comes back to you at a middling rank — neither a cleared table nor an impossible one. If the pile comes back high, the line may not be available.

It never overrides a sure thing. A play that wins the round, completes a clear, or goes out

keeps its own advice. Reading ahead only speaks where the answer was genuinely arguable.

Expert looks the furthest ahead, Experienced one turn, and Average plays the current turn only — which is part of what makes the levels feel different to play against.

Coach: Play

With Coaching on, the coach's recommended card(s) are highlighted in your hand, and a green Coach: Play … button (inside the Coaching panel, labeled with the actual play, e.g. *Coach: Play 3*) plays exactly that line in one tap. The coach's cards are also treated as the default selection, so the normal Play button is active on them too — you can play the recommendation from *either* button without re-selecting. Prefer your own play? Select any other card and it takes over; collapsing the Coaching panel hides the Coach button. The button always plays the *same* line the highlight shows.

Automate Player

Turn on Automate Player (setup, or the 🤖 toggle below your cards) to let the coach play your turns for you — useful for watching a game play out or auto-piloting a stretch. While it is on, an automated badge shows at the top of the play area and each hand it played is marked 🤖 in the score log. It keeps playing your seat until you select a card or press ESC (or toggle it off), which hands control straight back to you.

Coach styles

The coaching in Clear is not a set of general card-game maxims. Clear's decisions have no real equivalent elsewhere — a clear card is both an escape hatch and a liability you can be caught holding, a Risk card is a blind gamble you choose the moment for, and the pile you decline to clear is the pile you may have to pick up. So the guidance was built and refined from real game play and from simulation, and that work drove the underlying guidance engine itself — the rules each style uses to pick its move, not merely the words it uses to explain one. Choosing a style changes what the coach recommends, not how it phrases the recommendation.

The three coaches have names — Daryl, Madonna and Marty. Same rules, same game, different temperament. Which one you pick changes only what you are told; it never changes how the game plays or how the other seats play.

The three coaches are named after real players, and the styles are theirs — see [About this game & its history](#about-this-game-its-history).

Each coach is a single principle carried through every decision. The principle is what produces the advice — read the row and you can predict what that coach will tell you before he or she says it.

| Coach | Defining principle | What they recommend | What they accept in return | |---|---|---|---| | Daryl — plays it safe | Protect the position | Take the solid group play; keep flexible low cards; hold a clear as insurance; flip only into an empty pile | Fewer chances taken, so fewer rewards collected — she wins on cheap rounds, not on bold ones | | Madonna — plays balanced | None, deliberately | The straightforward value play, drawing on both the others | She borrows their weaknesses along with their strengths | | Marty — plays the risk | Act to remove risk | Flip on an empty or high pile; unload a high card before he's caught with it; spend a spare clear to seize the board | The biggest losses when a gamble misses |

Switch coaches mid-hand from the Coaching panel to see the same position argued three ways. The description of whoever you have chosen sits under the picker, so the name is never shown without saying what it means.

Your Coach and your Style are different settings, and they are independent. The coach is who advises you. Your Style — set per player in the Player table, and still Rock, Balanced or Gambler — is how that seat plays. You can play Rock and still ask Marty what he would do.

Daryl plays a style, not a winning style. She plays conservatively on purpose, and if you don't take risks there are fewer rewards to collect. He goes out about as often as anyone — what costs him is what he is left holding on the rounds he doesn't win. Going out often is not the same as going out cheaply.

Gambler pays for its position and collects on it. It takes the flips and spends the clears, which wins boards and loses big when a gamble misses.

Balanced has no defining principle, and that is what defines it. Rock commits to low variance, Gambler commits to pressure; Balanced commits to neither, so it borrows from both — the good and the bad. It takes enough risk to be caught with the pile, without taking enough to be paid for it. That is the honest cost of the middle road, and it is worth knowing before you choose: Balanced is the most neutral style to learn from, because it never pushes you far in either direction, and the least pointed to win with.

What this means for you. Pick the style that matches how you want to play, not the one that wins most. Switch styles live in the Coaching panel to see all three read the same hand — that comparison, on your own cards, is the fastest way to understand what each one values.

The table & display

How the game is drawn, and how you can adjust it. None of this changes the rules.

Player colors

Every seat is assigned its own color (set in the player list on the setup screen — the dropdown only offers colors no one else has taken). That color outlines the player's seat, their hand and stack cards, and — importantly — the cards they played onto the pile. The color is bold and glowing on that player's turn and muted otherwise. Because each pile card keeps the color of whoever played it, you can always see *whose* card is on top — the current player isn't credited with a card an earlier player laid down.

Table areas

The play screen is laid out in named regions:

Title Bar — the top strip: title, Guide/Scores links, theme toggle, New game.
Play Bar — the green panel: whose turn it is, the latest action, the first-hand cut, and the

current table layout (Table or Stacked). Sizing lives in View Settings, in the header.

Turn Status — within the Play Bar: whose turn and the last play.
Opponent Seats — each opponent's cards, on the radial arc or the stacked list.
The Pile — the center band of played cards (the current run).
Your Area — your seat: your Board stacks, your hand, the Coaching panel, and your play buttons.

A Legend at the bottom of the play screen explains the on-card icons (💥 Bust · 🃏 Pile · 🤖 Automated · S Clear · D Dealer), each linking to its Guide section. 🃏 marks a card that came from the pile — picked up on a bust or a take — rather than one you were dealt.

View

Auto (the default) picks the layout that fits and keeps picking it. Narrow the window, add a fifth player, open the game on a phone — it re-resolves on its own, every time, and you never have to open View Settings to fix it. If the table view would not fit the seats across the width, Auto simply uses the stacked list instead of showing you an overlapping table.

Table and Stacked force the choice and are respected as a choice. Force Table where it does not fit and the game says so, and offers to switch — it will not override you, because you asked for it deliberately.

View Settings

View Settings — the link in the header, next to Guide and Scores — is where everything about how Clear *looks* is set. Nothing here changes the game; it only adjusts how the table is drawn, and your choices are kept on your device, so size the app once and it opens that way next time.

Clear draws the table inside a window rather than stretching it across the full browser, because content spread over a very wide screen is harder to read, not easier. The window is never wider than your browser, and it sits to the left so the space it doesn't need stays in one place instead of being split down both sides.

View sets the table layout:

Auto — the arc when your window can show a legible card, the stacked list when it cannot.
Table — always the radial arc, with the opponents seated around it.
Stacked — always the list, each opponent on their own row. On a narrow screen this is the one

that works: the opponents scroll in their own band so the pile and your hand stay in view instead of being pushed off the bottom.

Then six sizes. Each moves only its own thing — the four card and text sizes are a number of pixels; the two window widths default to auto:

Setup window and Play window — how wide the app is on the setup screen and during play.

Both are auto by default, which means the app takes the whole screen and scales its contents to fit — on a tablet the page grows to meet the edge rather than stopping short and leaving a band down one side. Set either to a pixel width if you would rather pin it; auto returns when you clear it. A window narrower than the app's natural width wraps rather than shrinking, so text never gets smaller than it should be on a phone.

Card size — an opponent's card.
Pile — a card in the pile.
Your cards — the cards in your hand.
Text — the size of the writing.

That one-control-one-thing rule is the important part. Change Card size and your own hand does not move; change Your cards and the opponents do not. Earlier versions tied them together — one size governed the whole table and the others were multiples of it — which meant you could not ask for larger opponent cards without also enlarging your own hand.

The number you set is the size you get. If you choose cards too large for your window, the page scrolls rather than quietly overriding you. Nothing here can put the game into an unusable state: Back to defaults returns every control to its shipped value and forgets what was saved.

*Not sure what a setting will do? Move it and watch — every change applies immediately, and you can always come back with Back to defaults.*

Your game is kept if you leave

A game in progress is saved as you play, so closing the tab, refreshing, or following a link out to this guide and coming back does not lose it — you return to the same hands, the same pile and the same turn. It is saved between turns rather than in the middle of one, so if you leave part-way through a run of Risk gambles you come back to the start of that turn.

Opening the app asks you first. If a game is waiting, you get Continue or Start new rather than being dropped straight back into it. Continue names what it would restore — *Continue — 4 players, round 3* — because a saved game brings its own seat count and rules with it, and coming back to a different table than you expected is a poor surprise. The prompt only appears when there is genuinely something to resume; with no saved game you go straight to the setup screen.

Choosing Start new does not delete the saved game. It stays until a new game actually deals, so if you pick Start new and then change your mind, close the app and open it again — the offer is still there.

The save is dropped when the game finishes, and it is only reused if your settings still match: a saved game is never reopened under different rules. Finished games are kept separately in Scores.

Reset game setup

Reset game setup sits on the start page, beside Deal & play — on the page it resets. Returns the setup screen to its defaults: player names, colors, levels, per-seat styles, the coach style, and every rule variant. It deliberately leaves three things alone — your display settings, your Light/Dark choice, and your score history. Those are yours, not part of a game setup.

If a game is in progress it asks first, then ends that game and returns you to setup. It has to: the board in front of you was dealt under the old settings, so leaving it running would show you a game that no longer matches the screen that produced it.

Printing this guide

The Guide link opens this document in its own browser tab, so you can read it beside the game rather than instead of it. The contents sits in a column down the left and stays put as you scroll, marking the section you are reading. Search the guide at the top of it filters the contents as you type — Esc clears, Enter jumps to the first match. At the top right there is a Print / Save as PDF button — choose your printer, or pick *Save as PDF* as the destination to keep a copy.

The page carries a one-inch margin on all four sides, on screen and on paper, so what you read matches what you print.

The guide opens in the same window as the game — no wider than the start page, aligned to the left — so it reads as part of the app rather than a separate site.

The printed copy is laid out for paper rather than screen. Every page carries a header with the guide’s name and version, a footer with the site address, and a page number, so a printout that gets separated can be put back in order. Each numbered section starts on a fresh page, and the contents prints as its own first page. The search box and the Print button are dropped, and it prints black on white whatever color scheme you read in.

Every printed page carries a header with the guide’s name and version, a footer with the site address, and a page number — “Page 4 of 30” — so a printout that gets separated can be put back in order. The one-inch margin holds on every page, not just the first.

Optional rules

Clear plays the standard rules out of the box. Everything below is optional, independent of the USA / Canada set, and can be mixed freely.

Two change how a turn plays:

Risk Play — playing a Board card lets you immediately gamble the face-down Risk card beneath it,

the same turn.

Clear card (besides Jokers) — 10 by default. Set it to None for the only-Jokers variant,

or pick any other rank to make that rank the clear card instead.

The rest change the shape of the game rather than the turn: End condition, Game End Total, 4+ Card Clears, Piles Face Down, Pile Card Flip, Bust penalty, Card scoring, Pile Counts, Cards Dealt and Decks.

Every one of them has a Glossary entry with the full rule. This list is the map; the Glossary is the detail.

Scores & printing

The Scores link in the header (on every screen) opens a panel with two parts: This game — the current game's hand-by-hand table with running totals — and Games played — every finished game saved on this device. Each finished game shows a one-line summary (all players + final scores, winner marked); expand it (▸) to see its full hand-by-hand table. Tick the games you want (or Select all), then Print selected — a clean printable sheet you can send to your printer or Save as PDF — or Delete selected to clear them from the log.

Glossary

Players

How many seats are dealt in, from 2 to 8. You take the first seat; the others are AI opponents. More players pulls in more decks and puts more cards in play.

Level

Set per seat. For an opponent, Level sets how sharply that AI plays. For your own seat, Level tunes how much in-game coaching you get: Average shows the most hints, Experienced one, Expert none (see the Coaching section).

Average — The loosest play: explores more, doesn't always take the disciplined line, and

weighs only the turn in front of it. Pick it for an easier opponent, or — for yourself — if you're new and will want the most guidance once coaching lands.

Experienced — Steady, sensible play without the sharpest edges, looking one turn past the

current one. The balanced middle, and the default. Pick it once you know the flow of a round.

Expert — The disciplined line: sheds high cards early while the pile is high, holds

clear cards (10s and Jokers) as a way out, and dumps them on a player about to go out. It also looks the furthest ahead, weighing the hand a play would leave it over its next couple of turns rather than just the turn in front of it (see Playing the line). Pick it for the toughest opponents, or for yourself if you want little to no coaching.

Style

Set per player, including you — how that player plays. Rock, Balanced or Gambler. These are not the coach's names: the seats keep Rock / Balanced / Gambler, while the coaches are Daryl, Madonna and Marty. The principles behind them are the same three, described in Coach styles, but the settings are separate — you can play Rock and still ask Marty what he would do. It is independent of Level: Style is *what* a player is trying to do, Level is *how consistently* they do it. An Average Gambler and an Expert Gambler want the same things; the Expert just executes more reliably.

Give each opponent a different Style and a four-player table becomes four distinct players rather than four copies at different accuracy settings.

Your own Style is not tied to Coach style. You can play Rock and ask the Gambler coach what it would do — seeing the aggressive line is not the same as taking it, and whether you follow the advice is always your call. The one place the two meet is Automate Player, which plays *your* Style, not the coach's; to play the coach's line, use Coach: Play, which is a deliberate act each time.

Coach style

Sets whose advice you are shown (only when Coaching is on): Daryl (plays it safe), Madonna (plays balanced, and the default) or Marty (plays the risk). Switch it live in the Coaching panel to compare coaches on the same hand — the fastest way to see what each one values. The chosen coach's description sits under the picker.

This is separate from your own Style: asking a style for its opinion does not commit you to playing that way.

Coach styles is the full description of the three — what each values and what it accepts in return. This entry deliberately does not repeat it, so the two can never drift apart.

Decks

How many standard 54-card decks (two Jokers each) are shuffled together. Auto scales the count with the number of players — 2 decks for 2–3 players, 3 for 4, then one more deck per two extra players (4,4 for 5–6; 5 for 7–8). Fewer decks concentrate the 10s and Jokers, so almost every clear card ends up in play; more decks dilute them and add variety.

Cards Dealt

The total number of cards each player is dealt up front — 19 or 20. Those split into a hand plus four Board cards over four Risk cards. Because there is no stock, this is every card you will have for the round.

Clear Card value

A 10 or Joker — the most powerful card in the game. It clears the pile and grants an immediate extra turn. The setting controls the penalty each clear card costs (25 or 50) if you are caught holding it when a round ends, so hoarding them is a high-stakes gamble.

Card Point Value

What each leftover card is worth when a hand ends. Clear cards (10s and/or Jokers, per the "10s are clear cards" setting) are always the Clear Card value (25 or 50); J, Q, K = 10 (and a 10 that is an ordinary card = 10). The A–9 cards depend on the Card scoring setting:

Rank value (default): A = 1, 2–9 = face value (a 7 is 7 points). This is the standard rule.
A–9 = 5: every A–9 counts a flat 5 — a simpler count.

Lowest total wins, so these are the points you want to avoid holding.

Card scoring

The setting that chooses how leftover A–9 cards score: Rank value (default — A = 1, 2–9 = face value) or A–9 = 5 (a flat 5 each). Nothing else changes — Card Point Value above has the full table. The coach's “(N pts)” advice and the optional Pile Counts total both follow whichever you pick.

Bust penalty

An optional scoring variant (off by default). Set to 25 or 50 to take that many points as a flat penalty for each bust — each time you pick up the pile — during a round. It applies to everyone, including the round's winner, so a player who went out with zero card points can still end a round ahead of the field if they busted along the way. The round-over table shows the bust add on its own line (e.g. 💥×2 +50).

Pile Counts

An optional readout (off by default). When on, the pile shows its card count and total point value above it during play — the total uses the active Card scoring setting, so you can see at a glance how costly the pile is to pick up.

Clear card rank

On by default: 10s clear the pile like Jokers. Turn it off for the only-Jokers-clear variant — 10s become ordinary rank-10 cards, ordered between 9 and Jack, and only Jokers (and a four-of-a-kind Natural Clear) clear the pile.

End condition

How the game ends. Score total: play until a player's running total reaches the Game End Total. After N rounds: play a fixed number of rounds, then stop. Either way, the player with the lowest cumulative total wins.

Game End Total

The cumulative score that ends the game (300 or 500) when the end condition is Score total. As soon as any player's running total reaches it, the game stops and the lowest total wins.

Global Setting Set

A one-pick ready-made set: USA or Canada. Choosing one fills in the cards per player, clear-card value, game end total, and the 4-of-a-kind rule together. You can still fine-tune any individual setting afterward.

About the names. The names are a joke, and an affectionate one. I ran into these variations playing with Canadian friends, and it became the standing question before we started: *are we playing Canadian or USA rules?* That question is this setting.

The rules themselves are not a joke. Neither set is better — they are simply different, and both are good games. That is exactly why both are here: the Canadian variant changes how a hand feels, not how good it is, and a version of Clear that shipped only one of them would be poorer for it. The sets are named after where I met the rules, not after any official standard. Try both, then ask the question before you deal.

USA and Canada only SET VALUES — they do not lock them. Picking one fills in the four rules it covers (Cards Dealt, Clear Card value, Game End Total, and 4+ Card Clears), and you are free to change any of them afterwards. When you do, the picker reads Custom, because it would be misleading for it to keep saying "USA" while you are playing one of Canada's rules. Set them back and it reads USA or Canada again on its own. Custom is a description, not a choice — you cannot select it, because selecting it would mean "change nothing".

4+ Card Clears

The 4-of-a-kind rule, as its own switch. On (the Canada rule): more than four of the same rank can clear together in one clear — lay all your matching cards at once, past four, and they all clear (a clear, then play again). Off (the USA rule): a clear caps at the fourth card; any extra same-rank cards stay in front of you and become your next play. This is independent of the USA / Canada set, so you can run, say, USA rules with 4+ card clears turned on.

Piles Face Down

A layout variant (default off). Your 4 stacks are dealt with both cards face-down instead of a face-up Board card over a face-down Risk card — so all 8 table cards are blind. On your turn you may play a stack's top card blind: it plays if legal, or you pick up the pile if it is too high. Once the top is gone, the card beneath becomes the new (still face-down) top. You may play a pile card anytime on your turn, even with cards in hand. A bigger gamble than the standard table.

Selecting a pile card. Tap a face-down top to select it, then press Play — the same select-then-play you use for a card in your hand. You do not learn the rank first; that blindness is the whole point of this setting. What you choose is which stack to commit to. The per-stack Flip button does the same thing in one tap.

On an empty pile, this is not a gamble at all. Any card is legal on an empty pile, so a blind play always lands, and you keep the turn. The coach says so rather than warning you about a risk that cannot happen.

Pile Card Flip

A variant (default off) that lets you spend a whole turn to flip a face-down top pile card face-up instead of gambling it — the card stays on the pile as a known card you can play on a later turn. It works on any exposed face-down top (Piles-Face-Down cards, or a Risk card once its cover is gone). Trades a turn to remove the guesswork.

When is it worth the turn? Two different reasons, and the coach now names both. The low-risk one: a blind flip can force you to pick the pile up, so on a pile that is expensive to take, paying a turn to see the card first is cheaper than gambling it. On a cheap pile — a couple of cards — a failed flip costs almost nothing, so gambling is the better use of the turn. The strategic one: turning a card face-up leaves it on the pile as a known card, so you can play it deliberately on a later turn instead of hoping. Turning up is positioning, not only caution.

Risk Play

An optional rule. When it is on, playing a Board card lets you immediately gamble the face-down Risk card paired beneath it, the same turn — flip it blind: play on if it is legal, pick up the pile if it is too high. (With Piles Face Down there is no face-up Board to play, so Risk Play has no effect until a card is turned up via Pile Card Flip.)

Pause between Players

Pacing between turns. Auto plays each opponent's turn automatically after a short delay; Step (the default) pauses after every player so you tap Next to advance — handy for following the action closely. In Step mode, a clear that clears the pile (marked with an S badge) and a bust (a pile pickup) also pause with a Continue button — the clear pause even shows the cards that were swept before the pile clears, so you see exactly what happened before play moves on.

Dim non-playable Cards

When on, cards you can't legally play right now are dimmed, so the cards you *can* play stand out at a glance.

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