About Irish Poker
Irish Poker started the way most good drinking games do: in a kitchen, with a deck of cards that was missing the two of diamonds. Somebody taught the four rounds — red or black, higher or lower, inside or outside, name the suit — and within ten minutes the whole room was invested in whether a stranger’s fourth card was a club.
The problem was everything around the game. Someone always had to be the dealer instead of playing. Half the table couldn’t see the cards. Nobody could remember who owed how many drinks, and the one friend who moved away could never join. So this site was built to fix exactly those things and nothing more: a live, shared table in the browser that deals, enforces the rules, tracks every drink, and lets anyone join with a four-letter code — from the couch next to you or a couch three time zones away.
Who makes this
Irish Poker is designed, coded, and maintained by Dylan Cramer, a web developer who has spent an honestly concerning number of evenings play-testing round-four suit calls. It is a one-person labor of love, which is why bug reports sent through the contact page tend to get fixed quickly — there is no backlog committee, just a to-do list.
What the site believes in
- Free means free. No account, no sign-up, no premium tier, no “watch an ad to flip your card.” The site is supported by a few ordinary display ads on the content pages, and that’s it.
- The game starts in seconds. Every design decision is tested against one scenario: eight people standing in a kitchen who want to play right now. If a feature slows that down, it doesn’t ship.
- Drinking is optional; fun is not. The rules never require alcohol. Plenty of tables play with water, soda, or points — the tension of naming the suit works exactly the same. The alcohol-free guide exists because those tables deserve first-class support.
- Look after your table. The site is for adults of legal drinking age, a “drink” means a sip, and nobody should ever be pressured to play or pour. The best game nights are the ones everyone remembers.
What’s on the site
Beyond the game itself, we write real guides for people who take their party games seriously: the complete rulebook, the actual math behind every guess, house rules worth stealing, and more in the guides section. If an argument breaks out at your table, chances are one of those pages settles it.
Get in touch
Found a bug? Have a house rule the world needs? Just nailed four perfect calls and need a witness? The contact page goes straight to a human.