Last changed September 29, 2026
Family Poker Night is a free card game run by one person as a hobby. These are the terms you are agreeing to by playing it. They are written to be read, not to be skipped.
The chips are not money
Family Poker Night is a free, play-money card game. Chips have no monetary value, cannot be bought, sold, or cashed out, and reset to the same amount every hand. Backing the game is optional and unlocks cosmetic items only, none of which affect gameplay, odds, or outcomes in any way.
There is no wagering here and no way to introduce any. Everyone starts every hand on the same stack, so nothing anybody buys can win them a hand.
Who can play
Family Poker Night is meant for families, children included. Playing needs no account and no email address, and we collect nothing about you beyond the name you type in. A parent or guardian is responsible for a child’s use of the game, as they would be for any other website.
Backing the game is a purchase, so you must be 18 or over, and the card must be yours to use.
Your name, and the other people at the table
You choose a name of up to eight capital letters when you sit down. Everyone at your table sees it. Some names and letter combinations are refused; this is a family game.
There is no chat in this game, by design. The only thing you can say to the table is your name and the moves you make.
The person who opened a table is its host. A host can remove anyone from their own table at any time, for any reason or none, and does not have to explain it. We can also remove a player or close a table ourselves if something is going wrong.
What we do not promise
This runs on one small server and is offered as is. We do not promise it will be available, that it will work correctly, or that it will keep working tomorrow.
Tables do not last. A table disappears about ten minutes after the last person leaves it, and although we save enough to bring tables back across a restart, a game in progress is not saved and a table can be lost without warning. Scores live only as long as the table does. Treat everything here as ephemeral.
We may change the games, the rules, the look of it, or the terms on this page. We may stop running it altogether. If that happens there is nothing to wind down, because there is no account and nothing of yours is being held.
Backing the game
The game is free and will stay free. Backing the game is how this project covers the costs of continued development and the services that make it available, about $260 a year, but it is entirely optional. See Backers & thanks on the front page.
What Backers get is cosmetic only, and it is a single yes or no: backers get the backer features, everybody else gets the house ones. You choose the amount, and the amount changes nothing about what you get. There are no tiers.
Which features those are is not fixed. They may be added to, improved, retired or replaced, and what you get is whatever is on offer while you are playing. The intention is that the list grows. The Questions page describes what is on offer today.
Nothing you can buy affects play. Not the cards’ value, not who gets to deal, not the odds of any game function, not the chip quantity, not the score. If it ever could, it would not be for sale.
The sale is handled by a reseller who is the legal seller of the item, named on the checkout page. They take the payment, they issue the receipt, and they handle sales tax and VAT. We never see your card details. The merchant’s terms cover the transaction; these terms cover the game.
The backer features are unlocked by a link you are given when you come back from the checkout. Save it: it turns the features on in any browser. If you lose it, email us from the address you bought with and we will send you the same link again. There is no account to log in to. Refunds are on their own page and the answer is yes.
What belongs to whom
3/33 was not invented here. It’s not an original game, my family has played it for decades, and as far as we know it has never been written down. What this site is, is one person’s interpretation of it: which way the ambiguities are settled, what happens at the edges, and how it is dealt.
That interpretation, and the code, artwork, sounds and text that carry it, are Stephen W. Palm’s, and are not licensed for reuse.
The rules themselves belong to nobody. No one owns how a card game is played, and we claim nothing over yours. Play 3/33 at your own kitchen table, teach it to whoever you like, settle the edges differently if you want to — that is what a card game is for.
Mexican Sweat, 5 Card Draw and 7 Card Stud are traditional games in the public domain; this is one implementation of each.
Liability
Plainly: if this game goes wrong, what you can recover from us is limited to what you have paid us, which for almost everybody is nothing, and for a backer is the amount they chose.
We are not liable for lost tables, lost scores, lost games, time spent, or arguments at your table. Nothing here is a service you are relying on. It is a card game.
None of this takes away rights you have under the law where you live, and we do not try to exclude liability for anything the law says cannot be excluded — including death or personal injury caused by negligence, and fraud.
Behaving yourself
Do not use this to harass anybody, to break into it, to flood it, to resell it, or to do anything illegal. If you cause us a loss by doing one of those things, that is on you and not on us. This is not a trap for ordinary players: playing the game normally, losing badly, and saying so, is not a breach of anything.
Which law, and where
These terms are governed by the law of the State of Texas, and a dispute would be heard in Williamson County, Texas — except where the consumer law where you live gives you the right to your own courts and your own law, which it may well do, and which we are not trying to take from you.
Getting in touch
One address, read by one person: [email protected].