Simple rules, sharp edges
Two decks · out at 301Match the card showing by suit or rank, and get rid of your hand. Hold two of the same and you can lay them together. Can't go? Draw one — even when you could have played.
Then the teeth show. A two makes the next player pick up two, and it stacks. A black jack is five, and it stacks too — until someone lays the red jack, and suddenly it's nobody's problem. Eights skip you. Queens hand your turn straight back before you've finished enjoying it. Get caught holding cards when someone goes out and you're wearing the points. Cross 301 and you're out of the match.
A hand takes three minutes. Nobody has ever played just one.
Made for iPhone Duo
However you hold it, nothing's in the creaseFoista was built for the way iPhone Duo folds — not stretched to fit it.
Hold it like a book, and the table is on one page with your hand on the other. Prop it like a laptop, and the table sits above your hand. Open it flat, and the table takes the whole inner display — turn it sideways and the standings and the last few moves slide in beside it. Close it, and it plays on the outer screen.
Lessons, scorecards and every card that pops up arrange themselves around the fold, so nothing ever sits where you can't read it or reach it. It runs perfectly on a normal iPhone and iPad too — but on the Duo it feels like you're actually holding the cards.
Twelve opponents, self-taught
6,685 years of cards. Overnight.
The opponents aren't scripted, and they aren't cheating — they've never seen your hand, and they're not allowed to. They taught themselves. Overnight, the game dealt itself 82,000 hands, and to decide each move it imagined 1.17 billion more, playing every one through to the finish. At three minutes a hand on a real table, that is 6,685 years of playing cards.
What came out the other side thinks in under a millisecond on your phone, and not one of the twelve plays like the last — from the reckless to the ice-cold card-counter. The hard part already happened. You just get a game that's genuinely hard to beat.
Four tables, no second chances
Win all four and something else is waitingA tournament is four tables of three opponents, drawn from the twelve and getting harder at every table. Lose a match and that's the run — start again, with a different field.
Win all four and you're champion. Champions get offered something else: a one-on-one with the Governor, who remembers every hand you have ever played against him.
The first table is free, as often as you like.
Make it yours
Your rules, your table, your recordsWrite your own house rules — how many players, how many cards, what a two costs, what a black jack costs, whether eights skip and queens hold. Save a set and play tournaments with it.
Put your own photo on the backs of the cards and at your seat. Switch on a four-colour deck, pick a style of court card, and let the table sound like a table. Foista keeps your records across every match you ever play — the biggest hand held, the worst pickup taken, the longest round, and the night it happened.
Turn on iCloud and the match you walked away from on your phone is waiting on your iPad. No adverts, no timers, no energy to wait for.
What it costs
The first table is freeThe first table of a tournament is free, to play as often as you like — the whole standard game, as many times as you want.
One purchase, once, unlocks the rest: the later tables, the Governor, and your own house rules. It's a one-time unlock — no subscription, no adverts — and it's covered by Family Sharing.
Requirements
iPhone · iPad · iPhone DuoFoista runs on iPhone and iPad with iOS or iPadOS 17 or later, and is built to take full advantage of the iPhone Duo.