Challenge Poker Rally uses a single shuffled deck of cards, laid out a few at a time, to challenge you to make the highest scoring series of poker hands. Cards are laid out in patterns of 13 to 5 cards at a time. As each 5 card hand is scored 5 more cards are drawn from the deck until there are no remaining cards.
The strategy is a combination of scoring hands and holding onto key cards which will make better hands in the future. By paying attention to which cards have already been scored or discarded a player is gambling that the cards they are holding on to will make a big scoring hand.
Card Layouts with fewer cards will unlock based on several criteria. As the number of available cards is reduced the strategy becomes more complex for making high scoring hands. As the number of cards go down additional options are made available, including wild cards, introduced on the 9 card layout, and discarding, introduced on the 8 card layout. Discard behaves similarly to Video poker allowing the player to discard from 2 to 4 cards before scoring to try to improve their poker hands. In the 5 card layout there Jokers and 2s are wild and the player can discard up to 4 cards.
In addition, players have access to Bonus Cards. These allow a player to strategically select and replace cards. This action costs a single Bonus Card and can create much higher scoring hands. While initially this feature would appear to unbalance the game, the number of bonus cards used is attached to the final score. Any attempt to beat a score for a rally limits the number of bonus cards which can be used, so a "Challenge" is a fair fight because each player has the same opportunities, the same random shuffle, and the same number of bonus cards, to make the most high scoring hands in a rally.
During every game a total of 10 hands will be scored, with each hand worth from 0 to 100 points for a 5 of a kind. A rally is all 10 hands together. If one player challenges another player to beat their score, they are presented with the same shuffled deck.
Multiplayer uses Facebook to identify players. In order to appear on the leaderboard and challenge friends the app needs to be linked to Facebook.