5 Card Slingo - INSEFTG

If you’ve never played poker before, well, don’t start with 5 Card Slingo. *^_^* I’m serious! Go with Quick-Draw Poker, since that’s nearly impossible to mess up.

On the other hand, if “regular” poker is too boring for you, then you’ll LOVE 5 Card Slingo! It’s a fast-paced cross between poker and slots.

You start with a very green 5x5 board. This is where you’ll place your cards.

 It ain’t easy being green.

On each deal you’ll get five cards. Now the tricky part is that each card can only be placed in the column directly above it. Also, once the cards are placed, you can’t remove them. Until the round is over you can move cards around in their own columns, but you can’t put another card on top or anything sneaky like that. ^_^

Well…. crap.

Each row, column, and diagonal line counts as a separate hand and is scored individually. It can get a little confusing, but at least you don’t need to have a full hand (5 cards) before it’s scored!

Every game consists of five deals plus a sixth bonus deal. (The bonus deal costs 500 points.) The deals are timed, and you have a maximum of 30 seconds to decide what to do!

Those of you who are math savvy may have noticed a slight discrepancy. With six deals of five cards each, you’ll have a total of 30 cards to work with. But there are only 25 spots on the board. How can that work?

Easy. ^_^ You don’t have to place every card that you get! If you have something awesome going on and the wrong card pops up, just don’t use it.

IMPORTANT: The cards are taken from a virtual 52 card deck. (That’s a normal deck.) If you pass up a card it won’t turn up again!

 

Scoring

As previously mentioned, each row, column, and diagonal line counts as a hand.

A flush! Woohoo!!!

The entire board is scored after each deal, and you’ll get points for any new combinations. In other words, if you score a pair after the first deal, you won’t get points for that same pair again.

However, if you add to it by making it 3 of a kind or better, then you’ll get additional points for whatever you scored.

Here’s what everything is worth!

Hand	What It Is	Value
1 pair	Two cards with the same number or letter.	50 points
2 pairs	Four cards in sets of two.	100 points
3 of a kind	Three cards with the same number or letter.	500 points
Straight	Five cards in sequential order. Ex: 2,3,4,5,6	1,000 points
Flush	Five cards of the same suit. (Hearts, Spades, Diamonds, or Clubs.)	2,500 points
Full House	A pair + 3 of a kind	3,500 points
4 of a kind	Four cards with the same number or letter.	20,000 points
Straight Flush	Five cards in the same suit AND in sequential order.	36,000 points
Royal Flush	10, J, Q, K, and Ace of the same suit.	50,000 points

 

 

 

Tips & Tricks

1. If you’re dealt a straight in the first deal or two, lay it out diagonally. Typically it’s pretty hard to score anything on the diagonal, and this will leave your columns and rows open for pairs, flushes, or whatever else you want. ^_^

 

2. The easiest way to score well 9 out of 10 games is to build for flushes. Put one suit on each row, and use the 5th row to create pairs in the columns.

 

If you start out with a pair, split it on the diagonal. Like this!

 

How come?

 

You’ll get credit for the pair and you’re all set to build flushes. If you’re lucky you might get a 3rd seven to turn it into 3 of a kind. However! If you already have a 4 card flush, don’t wreck it! The 3 of a kind is worth 500 points and the flush is 2,500. Not worth it!

 

Here’s another hand built for flushes.

 

My that’s… colorful. ^_^

 

You can see that the bottom four rows are divided by suit, and the very top row made a pair of 5’s and Jacks.

 

This doesn’t work perfectly for every single game, but most of the time I’ll score at least one flush. Often more!

 

Admittedly, I’m not an expert at 5 Card Slingo. If you have tips, PLEASE share! (Remember, the best tip of the week gets 100 P4P points!)

 

 

 

Final Rating

I enjoy poker and slots, but 5 Card Slingo is too complicated for my taste. Whenever I play I can’t help but think, “I’m not smart enough for this game.” *^_^*

 

Once I figured out the flush trick I started earning more tokens and having more fun, but my strategy is limited. Also, on more than one occasion I had a perfect Royal Flush set up, and actually got the 5th card! Unfortunately the final card was in the wrong column, so I couldn’t use it. Booooo! :(

 

I think I would enjoy 5 Card Slingo more if it was a single player, untimed game. I like having time to think!

 

Final verdict is… *drumroll*  3.5 stars out of 5.

 

How about you? What would you rate it? Do you think it’s a simple game or does it make your head hurt too? ^_^

 

 

 

Similar Games

If you like poker games then you should definitely try some of these games!

• Flush Frenzy at BugleGames – This is another poker/slots mix, but at a much slower paced. *Whew!*
• Quick-Draw Poker at Gamesville – Play 7 hands at a time! Averages 2 cash winners each day!
• Turbo 21 at Pogo – If Blackjack is more your thing then you should really try Turbo 21! It’s one of the most addictive online card games that I’ve ever found. Really!