Social Poker, like the Prisoner’s Dilemma and the Ultimatum Game, is a simple game that abstracts an aspect of human decision-making regarding cooperation. None of these games are meant to provide algorithms or fully explanatory frameworks for the complexities of human cooperation, but they do often provide a useful window into social and cognitive processes.

Social poker is a game designed to investigate the pattern of individual and collective decisions that lead to the formation of self-organized groups out of a pool of individuals who hold complementary resources.

In social poker, every player in an initial pool is dealt two or three cards from a standard deck. The objective of the game is to form a poker hand by joining together with other players. Players are not permitted to trade their cards — they must instead combine cards with others to form a hand. Since the poker hand requires five cards, the minimum number of people necessary to form a hand is three (which yields 6 cards).

A hand earns a payoff for the group (for example, a group may earn $10 for a full house), which then must be divided among members. In one version of the game, this is decided via discussion and the group collectively fills out a sheet specifying who gets what. In another version, members make private “claims” on these earnings. If the collective claims exceed the earnings, the claims of all members are reduced by 50 cents for each $1 that the total claims exceed the amount earned. This presents a potential for exploitation, which can enrich an individual at the expense of his or her fellow group members.