Card Riot: President

The card game where finishing first isn't just winning — it's power.

You've played this before. Around a table sticky with beer, sometime around 2 AM, with people who are technically still your friends. You just don't remember it. Let us remind you.

Card Riot: President is a multiplayer, tournament-style take on the classic shedding game — the one you might know as Asshole, Scum, Capitalism, or Landlord, depending on who won last. Race to empty your hand, and where you finish sets your rank for the next round: President, Scum, or one of the forgettable people in the middle. Rank comes with privileges — every round the President automatically collects the Scum's two best cards and hands back two of their choosing, and the Scum just has to sit there and take it. Play a single table of frenemies or run a full bracket tournament to crown a World President.

Everyone plays from their phone — no app to install, just a QR code and a browser (works even at the stage of the night when typing is hard). A shared TV shows the live table, and a host runs the whole event from a console: formats, house rules, timing, bots, and sponsor breaks, all adjustable on the fly.

Entertainment only — Card Riot simulates card play for fun and is not a gambling product. The friendship damage, however, is very real.

Features

• 3–8 players per table — one table of friends, or a full bracket tournament that scales across many tables to crown a single champion.
• Phone-based play, zero install — everyone joins from their phone via QR code or access code. No downloads, no rules to argue about at 1 AM (the engine remembers them so your brain doesn't have to).
• Big-screen TV/HUD — a live table view showing card exchanges, revolution and skip state, round recaps, and sponsor breaks. Running several tables at once? The HUD auto-roams to whichever one is heating up, or you can pin its video and announcer to a single table.
• Full host console — control format, variants, timing, bot count, and ads live, mid-game, without stopping play.
• Bots that actually compete — heuristic (not random) opponents that preserve pairs, hold their bombs, and play believably. And they play for keeps: bots and humans are scored identically, so a bot can win your whole tournament fair and square. Sleep on that.
• Optional voice announcer — text-to-speech narration calls the action ("Dave plays a pair of nines, skipping Priya…"), reads round recaps, and announces the champion, so your defeat gets broadcast in a calm, professional voice.
• Emoji reactions — fire off Anger, Sad, Happy, Laugh, Surprised, or Love from your phone at any time, and the HUD launches a giant emoji racing or floating across the screen with a goofy sound effect and your name attached. Ideal for gloating.
• Built-in sponsor/ad breaks — run video, audio, or image ads on the HUD between rounds; play pauses and every phone shows a sponsor-break screen, buying everyone a moment to refill and reconsider their alliances.
• Rank-based card exchange — the Scum surrenders their two highest cards to the President every round, with the humiliation cascading down through Vice President and Vice Scum. This is the mechanic responsible for most of the fighting.
• Configurable house variants — toggle 2s Clear the Pile, Revolution, Skips, Jokers as Bombs, Complete Four-of-a-Kind, Last-Card Restriction, and Pass Locks You Out to fine-tune the chaos.
• Tournament brackets & Presidential War — earn points every round (President +100 down to Scum −100), advance the top tables through each bracket, and settle it all in a championship finale that crowns the First World President — and quietly documents who came in Third World.