Game 02 · Coastal voyage
Driftwood Hi-Lo
One card sits face up on the plank. Call the next one higher or lower, and the run rides on every correct call until you bank it. Both buttons show what the call pays before you touch them, because the number comes from the cards still in the deck.
Free virtual coinsJudgementMultipliers shown up front
Driftwood Hi-Lo · single deck
- Coins
- 10,000
- Run
- 0
- Streak
- 0
- Cards left
- 52
- Higher in deck 0
- Lower in deck 0
- Same rank 0
Choose an opening stake and deal. Arrow keys work once a card is showing: up for higher, down for lower.
Coins are free virtual counters with no monetary value. They cannot be bought, cashed out, redeemed or exchanged for anything.
01 / The rules
How a hand plays out
- Pick an opening stake and press deal. The stake leaves your balance and becomes your run.
- The card on the plank is your reference. Aces are high, twos are low, and suits are ignored entirely.
- Call higher or lower. The multiplier printed on the button is applied to your whole run if you are right.
- A card of the same rank is a push: the run stays exactly where it is and the new card becomes your reference.
- Get it wrong and the run is gone. Bank it and the coins go back to your balance, along with a new personal record if it beats your best.
Where the multipliers come from
The game counts the cards left in the deck each time you are asked to call. If nineteen cards are higher than your reference and twenty-eight are lower, then calling higher is right 19 out of 47 times once same-rank pushes are set aside — a probability of about 0.404.
A payout that exactly matched those odds would be 1 divided by 0.404, or 2.47 times the run. Driftwood Hi-Lo pays 98 per cent of that, so 2.42. That two per cent is the house edge, applied to coins that cannot be turned into anything, and it is the same two per cent on every call rather than a figure that shifts when you start winning.
The three counts under the plank are live, so you can watch the numbers move as the deck empties. When fewer than ten cards remain, a full 52-card deck is shuffled in and the counts jump accordingly.
Streaks and when to bank
Multipliers compound. A run of 50 coins through three correct calls at 1.35, 2.42 and 1.80 comes to 297 coins, and one wrong call after that takes the lot. There is no pattern to spot: the next card is independent of the last, and your only real decision is how long to let the run ride.
Extreme references are the cheap ones. With a two showing and a fresh deck, every one of the 48 non-tie cards is higher, so that call pays the floor of 1.02. An eight showing splits the deck 24 either way and pays 1.96 in both directions — as close to a coin toss as this game gets. And when a call is impossible, such as lower on a two with no smaller cards left, the button is simply disabled rather than offered at long odds.
Worked example
You deal for 50 coins and the eight of clubs appears. Twenty-four cards are higher, twenty-four are lower and three match, so both buttons read ×1.96.
You call higher and the queen of hearts lands. The run becomes 98 coins and the queen is now your reference: eight cards beat it, thirty-nine sit below it, so higher pays ×5.75 and lower ×1.18.
Bank there and 98 coins join your balance. Call again and a queen-beating king takes the run to 564 — or a lower card ends it at nothing.
Try the others
Fancy no decisions at all? Midway Lights is a pure reel game. Prefer a longer sit-down? Steam Vent Solitaire takes ten minutes a layout.