The poker table felt like it was from a bootleg app I downloaded at, like, 4 AM from a site that definitely gave my phone digital herpes. You know the vibe. Three opponents, a blonde, a redhead, a brunette, all staring at me with that specific dead eyed look of a real model photo that’s been poorly cropped. The blonde is in jeans and this lacy thing, and the whole setup screams early 2000s Flash game but somehow it’s running in my browser right now, making my laptop fan sound like a jet engine.

The game is just five card draw but stripped down to its bones, pun fully intended. You get a hand and you can swap cards, but the “sexy opponents” thing means you’re basically just clicking on them to force a discard. I don’t even know the rules half the time. I’m just hitting the redhead’s cards because her pixelated smirk is annoying me. She folded with a pair of tens once and I felt a weird, genuine flash of victory. Then she took off her top and I remembered why I was there. The brunette has this deadpan expression that doesn’t change whether she’s winning a hand or down to her bra, which is honestly a mood. It’s a striptease where nobody seems particularly happy to be there, and that friction is the only thing keeping me clicking.

I got stuck for ten minutes because I forgot you could change more than one card. Ten minutes of losing to the blonde who just kept smirking in her jeans. I almost closed the tab. The lingerie sets are all weirdly high definition compared to the card table, like they were glued on from a different photoshoot. It’s not a good game. The poker is braindead. But there’s a raw, unpolished nerve it hits, a taboo of just peeling away layers from a static image through a card game that barely functions. I won’t recommend it but I also haven’t closed the tab. The redhead is still down to her stockings and I think I have a flush.