How Progressive Squid Poker works
A side-game that runs on top of regular Hold'em and quietly taxes every hand. Here's the whole thing in a couple of minutes.
Progressive Squid Poker is ordinary No-Limit Hold'em with a bounty game running alongside it. In its classic form it's known as the nit game or stand-up game, a friendly pressure-game that pushes tight players to get involved. Here, the bounty token is a squid.
Watch it in action
Earning a squid
You earn one squid by winning a hand and showing it down ("win-and-show"). One squid is awarded per hand, to the winner. Collect squids and you finish in the money; finish with none and you're the one paying.
Who pays whom
When the game ends, every player without a squid pays every player who holds one. The more squids you hold, the more each squidless player owes you. It's zero-sum: the squidless fund the holders.
The "progressive" twist
The classic stand-up game caps each player at one token, and the last player left without one is the lone payer. Two separate settings change that. Lifting the cap lets players hold more than one squid, but on its own the scoring stays linear: every squid is worth the same flat amount, so a stack of three is just worth three. Progressive scoring is the other setting: each squid in a stack is worth progressively more, on a rising multiplier. With the default multiplier, one squid is worth 1, two are worth 2, but three are worth 6 and five are worth 15. That escalation is what makes progressive squid so swingy: win a few hands and your end-game value climbs fast, fall behind and the bill does too.
Scaling by the number of losers
Some tables add one more multiplier on top: the whole settlement is multiplied by how many players finish without a squid. Say one holder is worth 10 and three players finish empty-handed. Normally each of the three pays 10, so the holder collects 30. With scaling on, every amount is multiplied by the three losers: each loser pays 30 and the holder collects 90. It's a much higher-stakes variant, so it's worth knowing which version your table plays. The calculator has a switch for it.
Why it changes every decision: the perceived ante
Because winning a hand earns a squid that boosts your end-game payout, every pot carries a hidden incentive on top of the normal ante. We call it your perceived ante: the true extra cost (and reward) of contesting a hand. It's invisible at the table and it shifts every single hand as the squid counts change.
That's the whole point of Squid Solutions: it computes your perceived ante for every seat, in an instant, so you always know your real price to play.
Know your real ante.
See your exact perceived ante for any table state in seconds.