Harken Tone Poker

1.What Is Tone Poker?

Tone Poker is a friendly musical game inspired by five-card draw poker. Each card is a chromatic interval (0–11). The result of play is sound.

You don’t need musical training — the app handles the structure. You do the listening.

One person starts the table as the Host. Others join as Players.

Host: enter a name → choose a tonic → click Start Game.

Players: click Join Table → enter a name → choose an available tonic.

If no hand is in progress, you join immediately. Otherwise, you are seated at the start of the next hand.

Each player has a draw deck, a discard pile, and a five-card hand area.

Color identifies pitch. Position shows player order around the table.

Deal / Draw: click your draw deck to deal cards. Each new card plays as it appears.
Select: click a card to select it. It plays and stays selected.
Deselect: click a selected card to unselect it. No sound is played.
Discard: select up to three cards, then click your discard pile once to replace them.
Play Hand: click your nameplate to play all five cards as a short musical phrase.

Tone Poker uses a piano sound. Audio confirms key actions: dealing, selecting, and playing hands.

Silence is also meaningful — deselecting is silent by design.

Click Play Hands to hear every hand on the table once.

Hand ranking is poker-pure (Phase I):

High Card: No pair, no straight, no flush.
One Pair: Exactly one completed rank pair (including Aces when 0 and 6 are both present).
Two Pair: Any two completed rank pairs (A/K/Q/J/C/S).
Straight: Five consecutive intervals (wrap allowed). Straight beats Two Pair.
Flush: Five cards of the same suit class (all Major, or all Minor; Aces are Neutral).
Royal Flush: A–K–Q–J–C in the same suit class (Major or Minor). If two Royals appear: Supreme beats Select.

Tone Poker uses familiar poker ideas, mapped onto the 12 interval cards (0–11). Cards always sound as their interval; scoring is a separate layer.

Ranks / symbols: Ace 0 and 6 = A. Kings 7,5 = K. Queens 2,10 = Q. Jacks 9,3 = J. Champions 4,8 = C. Squires 11,1 = S.
Aces as a pair: Aces are the two cards 0 and 6. If a hand contains 0 and 6, that is a pair of Aces for One‑Pair / Two‑Pair purposes.
Royal Flush: A–K–Q–J–C (no pairs). Two strengths: Supreme (cycle‑pure) and Select (cycle‑mixed).
Select example: 6,5,2,3,4 is A–K–Q–J–C (Select Royal). It may look like a 2–6 run, but it must score as Royal (Royal detection comes before Straight).
Supreme examples: 0,7,2,9,4 and 0,5,10,3,8 (Ace may be 0 or 6).
Select Royals: all other A–K–Q–J–C mixes. They are compared by “cycle purity” (more of the royal cards in one cycle direction, especially closer to the tonic, wins).
Pairs: matching rank pairs (A/K/Q/J/C/S). Example: 0 + 6 is a Pair of Aces.
No wild cards: there are no jokers and no wild-card scoring in Phase I.
Suit (Tone Poker): “same suit” means the same polarity (all Major or all Minor). Aces (0,6) are neutral.
Show Score: after everyone has played, use Show Score to see winner order and hand labels.
Placement bonus: after the hand is ranked, each player earns a small finish-position bonus so placement matters (dynamic for 2–12 players): 1st = + (N−1), 2nd = + (N−2), … last = +0, where N = number of players in the hand.

Tone Poker is not about speed. It’s about attention, contrast, and shared listening. Take your time — let the table play.

Each card shows a small serif symbol in two corners (top-left and bottom-right) so pairs are easy to spot when fanned:

A = Ace (0, 6)
K = King (7, 5)
Q = Queen (2, 10)
J = Jack (9, 3)
C = Champion (4, 8)
S = Squire (11, 1)