Sanshui:
Poker
Puzzle

What the App Does

The waters. Thirteen cards go into a three-card front, a five-card middle and a five-card back. The back must be at least as strong as the middle, and the middle as the front, or the hand fouls. Every board is a puzzle with goals to meet: a made hand in a certain water, a bonus points total, a cap on what you may use.

Tokens. Each puzzle drops tokens you play onto the waters: one adds a card, one takes the highest card out, one voids a water, one trades a whole water for your rival’s (or the deck’s), and four triangles rewrite a row into a flush or a straight. Solving means finding which tokens to play, and where.

Four modes. Puzzle mode climbs level by level at your own pace. Timed is a speedrun: solve each puzzle before the clock runs out and see how far one unbroken run can go. The Daily Tide is five puzzles a day, the same for every puzzler, a new kind each day, with one harder Dive beside them. Shen mode is a battle against Master Shen, who plays the same tokens by the same rules. Rare instant wins, such as the Dragon, win outright with their own animation.

Presence and the leaderboard. Your Presence is the most timed puzzles you have solved in one unbroken run. Puzzlers who sign in can appear on the leaderboard under a table name they choose, and post on the puzzlers’ blog.

Free to play. The demo is free and needs no account. One optional one-time purchase, Sanshui Complete, opens the full game for life; on Android it is an in-app purchase through Google Play. There are no ads inside the game, and no special cards or paid boosts.

Signing In With Google

Signing in is optional. You can play the demo without an account; nothing about it is sent to us. If you choose to sign in, you can use your Google account or a passkey.

What we ask Google for. Only Google’s basic sign-in (the openid, email and profile scopes). Google shares your name, email address and profile picture with every such sign-in; Sanshui uses only your confirmed email address and ignores the rest. We do not ask for access to your Gmail, contacts, files, calendar or anything else in your Google account, and we never see your Google password.

Why. We use the confirmed address only to recognise you, so that the same Google account always opens the same save. That is what lets your save (your progress, settings and controls) follow you between devices, your Presence count on the leaderboard, a 5000 club place or the full game you bought stay yours on every device, and your account be deleted when you ask.

What we keep. We do not store the address you sign in with: we keep a secure one-way code made from it. We keep the address itself only when you choose to, such as by joining the 5000 club or the testers. We never sell your information or use it for advertising.

Sanshui’s use of information received from Google APIs adheres to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements. The full details are in our Privacy Policy.

Your Data, Your Choice

A signed-in puzzler can delete their account at any time, with Delete account in the Privacy Policy. It removes the save, the leaderboard entry, sign-in and everything else kept for the account.

Who We Are & Contact

Sanshui is made by Sportella and published by ARDS Workup & Affiliated Products, 107 S Lane St #1003, Blissfield, MI 49228, United States. Its home is thepokerpuzzle.com.

Message the team from the Feedback panel on the puzzlers’ blog, email Sportella@ThePokerPuzzle.com or call +1 757 SANSHUI (+1 757-726-7484).