Matematico

Matematico and Math Poker are the same game. Numbers 1 to 13 are drawn one at a time and written into a 5×5 grid, and points come from the poker combination in every row, every column and both diagonals. Only the scoring tables differ, and even those in a handful of rows. Playing it takes one click here, free and without signing up.

Two names, one game

In Czech schools the game goes around as matematický poker, at camps and clubs rather as Matematico. The rules are the same either way: one deck of numbers for everybody playing, one number a round, twenty-five squares and twelve lines to look for pairs, three of a kind, straights and four of a kind in.

The spelling varies. Matematico is the usual Czech form, Mathematico or Mathematical Poker the English one, and Matematiko turns up as well. None of them is wrong and all of them lead to one game.

The related game with real cards is Poker Squares, elsewhere Poker Solitaire: twenty-five cards from a standard deck go into a 5×5 grid and ten lines are scored, the diagonals are not. Matematico takes only the value from a card, has no use for suits, and does count both diagonals. Hence the difference in tactics: in Matematico the middle square serves four lines at once.

Where the game came from

The trail leads to England and stops in the autumn of 1908. An author of the day writing as “Jackpot” said of Poker Patience that it had been “introduced so recently as the autumn of 1908”, and the collector Tony Hall, who owns the period rule booklets, found nothing older in the literature. The first known printed piece on the game is from that same year: the booklet Poker Patience and Progressive Poker Patience by Charles Vidal Diehl, published in London by the card makers Goodall & Son.

Diehl did not claim the game. In the preface he wrote that its origin was “quite as doubtful as that of Bridge or Poker itself” and floated the idea that it may have come from China. Hall adds that there is no telling whether Diehl merely found the game and wrote it down or had a hand in devising it, and that we may never know.

A year later the game is in Hoyle. The revised 1909 edition of Hoyle’s Games Modernized carries a Poker Patience chapter as a new addition and describes it as a game “which has recently come into favour among card-players”, so it records the game, it does not invent it. One rule has since fallen away: every card after the first had to be laid next to one already on the table. The 1909 scoring table, on the other hand, has survived unchanged and is still the English one: straight flush 30, fours 16, straight 12, full 10, threes 6, flush 5, two pairs 3, one pair 1.

And above all: the form for a whole room is already in that 1909 text. “As a card is dealt, the dealer names it aloud; each of the other players then selects the same card from his own pack,” it says, “every one uses his own judgment as to the laying-out of the cards.” That is exactly what happens in a classroom, only with numbers called out instead of cards. The school form of the game is therefore not a Czech idea, it stands in the oldest printed rules.

The Czech trail is young and thin by comparison. The oldest dated Czech source to be found is a 2006 set of study materials from the Society of Mathematics Teachers JČMF, with a chapter “Matematico (also known as math poker)”. It names no author of the game, and the only hint at its age is personal: “Matematico is a game I have been playing with children for what must be a quarter of a century.” That points to the early 1980s, but it is a memory, not a record. The table in it scores rows and columns only; the diagonal bonus that today’s Matematico rests on is not there yet.

And what is not known: who invented it. The English Wikipedia entry on Poker Squares has not a line about the origin. Not one Czech or Slovak source names an author, and not one of them mentions Poker Squares: the kinship is plain from the rules, but nobody has written it down. Nor did anything turn up on where the name Matematico came from, or how the game got from Edwardian England to Czech schools. Every Czech source has a slightly different scoring table on top of that, which says enough about how it spread: hand to hand, not out of one book.

Sources

• Hoyle’s Games Modernized, revised edition 1909, the Poker Patience chapter, full text on Wikisource.
• Tony Hall: Poker Patience, The World of Playing Cards; the rule booklets of 1908 to 1912.
• A. Vávrová, J. Novotná, M. Volfová, A. Jančařík: Games in the teaching of mathematics, Society of Mathematics Teachers JČMF 2006, pp. 7–8, in Czech (PDF).
• Poker squares on the English Wikipedia; the English and American scoring tables after Morehead & Mott-Smith, The Complete Book of Solitaire and Patience Games (1949).

The rules of Matematico in short

1. Every player has their own empty 5×5 grid, on paper or on a screen.
2. One number from 1 to 13 is drawn and called out to everybody at once. The deck holds four cards of every value, 52 numbers in all.
3. Everybody writes the drawn number into one free square. A number written down is never moved again and a round cannot be skipped.
4. After twenty-five rounds the grid is full. Five rows, five columns and both diagonals are added up, each line counting only its best combination.
5. The highest total wins. Since everybody arranges the same sequence of numbers, what gets compared is the decisions, not the luck of the draw.

All of it in detail, jokers and the full table of the game here included, is on the Rules page.

The Matematico scoring table

This is the table handed out most often under the name Matematico. It does not care whether the numbers sit next to each other in the line, nor how they are ordered.

The school variant of the same game has a slightly different table: it knows no diagonal bonus, but adds the royal straight 1, 10, 11, 12, 13 for 150 points and four 1s for 200. It sits, printable game sheet and all, on the Math Poker at school page.

The game on this site scores differently again. It also tells whether a combination lies in the line unbroken and whether a straight is sorted, so the same grid is worth a different number of points depending on how it is put together. The full table is on the Rules page.

How the variants differ

The base is the same in all three tables, they part company at the high combinations. The column of the game here shows the base value, that is a combination scattered along the line; being unbroken and having a sorted straight both add to it.

Jokers are the one extra rule the game here has over Matematico: the deck of 54 cards holds two of them and they stand in for any number, so a line can hold five of a kind. On paper both variants are played on the same sheet, it is enough to agree before the round which table applies.

Where to play Matematico

In the browser you can start right away: the easy and hard game against your own record, the daily challenge on one deck for everyone, a duel for two and a group game for up to fifty people on a shared sequence of numbers. The leaderboard lines the results up.

On paper the number picker stands in for the deck and shows what has been drawn, and the grid scores a board filled in by hand. A printable 5×5 game sheet and a plan for a whole class are on the school page.

Common questions

Is Matematico the same as Math Poker?

Yes, it is one game under two names. A 5×5 grid, numbers 1 to 13, one drawn number a round and points for poker combinations in five rows, five columns and both diagonals. Only the scoring tables differ, and even those in a handful of rows.

Is it spelled Matematico or Mathematico?

Both are in use. Matematico is the usual Czech spelling, Mathematico or Mathematical Poker the English one. Neither form is wrong, it is still the same game.

How many points is a diagonal worth in Matematico?

In the widespread variant of Matematico a combination laid into a diagonal is worth 10 points more. The school table of Math Poker has no such bonus and neither has the game on this site: a diagonal scores there exactly like a row or a column.

Can Matematico be played online for free?

Yes, here in the browser, with nothing to install, no advertising and no sign-up. Alone against your record, in twos on the same sequence of numbers, or in a group of up to fifty players.

How many players does Matematico take?

One and up. On paper a whole class plays the same sequence of numbers, everyone on their own sheet; in the browser one lobby holds fifty players.

Who invented Matematico?

Nobody knows. The oldest printed rules of the same game are the English Poker Patience of 1908 and they name no author: Charles Vidal Diehl, who wrote the first known rule booklet, said himself that the origin of the game was quite as doubtful as that of bridge or poker. Not one Czech or Slovak source names an author either. The game is passed hand to hand and every source has a slightly different scoring table.