Rice Street is a bluffing card game. You play with a 54-card deck (52 standard + 2 jokers) against up to 15 others. Every turn you draw cards, compare your total to a shared community pile called the bar, and make one of three calls — Low, Par, or Bust — that either scout, stand pat, or accuse. Wrong calls load a bullet into a six-chamber revolver. When your chamber hits 6 bullets you're guaranteed dead on the next trigger pull.
The last player alive wins.
The core tension is information. Everything visible — the bar, dead players' cards, revealed cards from accusations — shrinks the unseen pool. Good players count.
Setup
2–16 players, each seated in turn order around the table.
Every player starts with an empty hand, no settled cards, and 0 bullets in their chamber (max 6).
One starting player is chosen at random. Turns advance clockwise from there.
The bar is seeded with one card from the top of the deck. If that card is a face card (J/Q/K), it stays and another card is drawn until the bar contains a valuable card (number, Ace, or Joker).
The deck & card values
Card
Value
Role
Ace (A)
1,000
Counts as a number for total. Does not count as a number card for the Bust thief check.
2 through 10
N × 1,000
Number cards. Drawing more than one makes you vulnerable to a Bust.
Jack / Queen / King
0
Worth nothing for the bar comparison. Critical for the bullet reset.
Joker (×2)
1,000
Wild. Substitutes for any face card or ace in the reset rule.
Key intuition. Aces look like number cards on your total but are invisible to the Bust thief check. They're the safest way to inflate your total, and they lure opponents into wrong accusations.
The bar
The bar is the community total everyone's playing against. When you call Par, you're claiming your settled-plus-hand total meets or exceeds the bar. When you call Low, you're claiming it's below.
How the bar grows
At the start of the game, one valuable card is drawn to the bar.
After every full cycle (when the turn returns to the starting player), one more card is added.
If the drawn card is a face card (J/Q/K), it stays and another card is drawn — the bar always gains at least one valuable card per cycle.
The bar total is shown at the top of the screen and stays pinned while you scroll.
Turn structure
1Hand → settled
2Draw 0–4
3Make a call
4Resolve (roulette if needed)
At the start of your turn, any cards left in your hand from the previous turn move into your settled pile. Settled cards still count toward your total but are no longer "in hand" for the Bust thief check.
You may draw up to 4 cards from the top of the deck. Each draw adds to your hand.
You must then make exactly one call (see next section). You can call without drawing if your settled total is already where you want it.
The call resolves — possibly triggering a reveal, a face pull, or a roulette shot.
The three calls
Low
"My total is below the bar." Exposes every living opponent — all their cards become revealed to the whole table. If your hand is empty, you also pull every face card from the bar into your settled. Does not pull the trigger, but chambers +1 bullet (the bullet is the price of the full-table scout). Cannot be called when your chamber is full (6/6).
Par
"My total is at or above the bar." Ends your turn with no scout and no bullet load on its own. If you par with an empty hand and the bar contains face cards, you pull them all into your settled (a face pull). Drawing any card this turn cancels the face pull.
Bust
Accuses the previous player of cheating. Bust succeeds if either of the following is true:
They were thieving — drew more than one number card (2 through 10) this turn. Aces and jokers don't count as number cards.
They lied — claimed Par while their total was below the bar, or claimed Low while their total was at or above.
If either condition holds, they shoot. If neither holds, you shoot.
Low's hidden cost. Low is the only "defensive" call — it doesn't pull the trigger. But it does chamber a bullet, so calling Low repeatedly eventually loads your revolver. When your chamber is at 6/6, the Low button is disabled and you must pick Par or Bust.
Why one accusation? Previous versions had separate Thief and Liar calls. In practice each was correct ~20% of the time, which made accusing feel like a suicide play. Bust stacks the two checks into one roll — you're betting the previous player slipped in either dimension — so accusing pays off often enough to shape the game around it.
Roulette & bullets
When a call resolves to a trigger pull, the player spins a six-chamber revolver with bullets loaded. The probability of death is bullets ÷ 6.
When do bullets load?
Low call: +1 bullet chambered (no trigger pull). Cost of scouting.
Par call: no bullet load, no trigger pull.
Surviving a failed accusation: +1 bullet and trigger pull. If the bullet doesn't kill you, it's still added to the chamber for next time.
Surviving a sudden-death shot: +1 bullet if your total was below the bar at deck-out (otherwise no load).
A player at 3 bullets calls Par, gets Busted correctly. They shoot. Their death chance is 3/6 = 50%. If they survive, they now carry 4 bullets.
Saving grace — bullet reset
Your chamber drops to 0 bullets immediately when either of these combinations appears in your hand + settled:
Three of J/Q/K/A of the same suit. Example: J♥ + Q♥ + A♥. Jokers count as wildcards for any missing rank of any suit.
Three of a kind of any face rank or ace. Three Jacks, three Queens, three Kings, or three Aces — suits don't matter. Jokers again substitute.
When is the check run? The saving-grace check fires automatically in three situations: at the start of each new round (post-death reshuffle), before each shot during sudden death, and before any accusation-triggered trigger pull. If you're about to take a shot from a failed Bust or from being correctly Busted, and you hold a valid combo in your hand or settled pile, your combo reveals itself, your chamber resets to 0, and the shot does not fire.
Cost of a pre-shot save. Saving from a shot reveals your entire hand and settled pile. Those cards are now public — which means they become targets for the Joker-burn attack (see below). You trade secrecy for survival.
You're holding K♠, K♥, and one Joker. Checked at round start — joker becomes a third King → three Kings → chamber resets to 0. You're out of the immediate danger zone.
Joker burn — destroy a card
At any point on your turn before your call, if you hold a Joker in your hand or settled pile, you may burn it to destroy one card.
Targeting an opponent
The target card must be revealed — visible to the whole table. Unrevealed opponent cards can't be attacked.
Pick any living opponent and any one of their revealed cards.
Targeting yourself
You may also target any of your own hand or settled cards — they don't need to be revealed, since you can see them anyway.
Use this to delete dead weight, ditch a number card before a Bust check, or sculpt your total before a Par.
A Joker can burn itself. Pick your own Joker as the target — it acts as both the cost and the target and goes straight to the graveyard. Useful when you want to dump a revealed Joker before someone else makes use of the information.
Common rules
Both the Joker and the destroyed card go to the graveyard. They are permanently removed from circulation — they will not return on the next round's reshuffle. The graveyard is visible to everyone.
The deleted card's owner loses the value (or face-card reset progress) associated with it.
Only one burn per turn per player.
Why a Joker. There are only two Jokers in the deck, so strikes are naturally bounded and observable. Each burn permanently shrinks the round-cycle pool by two cards — over a long game this changes the math everyone is counting against. You only pay this for high-leverage deletions: an opponent's ace, their 10, a face card close to completing their saving grace, or one of your own cards that's compromising your call.
Face pulls
When a player calls Par with an empty hand and the bar contains face cards (J/Q/K), those face cards move from the bar into the player's settled pile. This is called a face pull. Face cards are worth 0 but are critical for assembling the saving-grace combos.
Face-pull snipe
An extra edge case: if you're not the round starter, you've been accused and survived with an empty hand, and it's the last turn of the cycle, you get a chance to face-pull before the starter — stealing any face cards from the bar before they could. This rewards clutch defenders.
Who starts the next round after a death
Death ends the current round and starts a new one. The next starting player depends on how the death happened:
Accuser dies (they called Bust wrongly and their own shot killed them): the accused now starts the next round.
Accused dies (they were correctly accused and their shot killed them): the accuser starts the next round.
Sudden-death death: the player who would have gone next in turn order takes over as starter.
After a death, the deck is reshuffled (all remaining hands, settled piles, and the bar return to the deck), and a fresh bar card is drawn. All claims are cleared. All alive players keep their bullet counts (but a fresh saving-grace check runs first).
Sudden death
When the deck runs completely empty and play can't continue, sudden death is triggered.
All living players are sorted by their current total, highest first.
In that order, each player runs the saving-grace check. If they qualify, their bullets are wiped and they skip their shot entirely.
Otherwise, they pull the trigger. Their bullets/6 death chance applies.
If anyone dies, sudden death stops; a new round begins (see succession above).
If nobody dies and nobody is saved, the deck is reshuffled from everyone's hands, settled piles, and the bar, and play resumes.
Sudden death is a double-edged sword for leaders. The highest total pulls first, which means winning the round also makes you the first target. Smart play means not winning too hard.
Winning the game
The last player alive wins. Everything — the bar total, your hoarded faces, the bounties you laid — is moot if you don't survive.
Edge cases & quirks
Chamber full + no hand: with 6/6 bullets and an empty hand, you cannot call Low. You must Par (and eat the bust risk) or call Bust yourself.
First turn: the starting player has total = 0 against a non-zero bar. Their safe options are to draw or to immediately call Low for a free scout at +1 bullet.
Bust on an empty hand: if the previous player has an empty hand (they passed or face-pulled), the thief half of Bust always fails — no drawn number cards to be greedy about. Bust can still catch them on the liar half if their claim contradicts their total.
Bust on a Low caller: Low is almost always a truthful signal — players self-select to call Low when their total really is below the bar. The liar half of Bust rarely catches a Low. An empty-hand Low is guaranteed clean — never Bust it.
Face cards in bar after a Bust: if an accusation resolves without a death, the accuser (who is now the current player) may still face-pull if they have an empty hand — the face pull follows the resolution.
Joker visibility: a joker is worth 1000 toward your total, so it helps your Par. But it's also always counted as a "non-number" card for the Bust thief check — you can't be thief-busted on a joker.
Glossary
Bar — the shared community card pile. Its total is the threshold all Par/Low calls refer to.
Hand — cards drawn this turn, still live for the Bust thief check.
Settled — cards from previous turns. Count toward total but are no longer in hand for the Bust thief check.
Bust — accusation that catches the previous player if they were either thieving (drew >1 number card) or lying (claim contradicts total). Either one is enough.
Revealed cards — cards you've seen on an opponent due to scouts, accusations, or their death. Everyone at the table sees revealed cards.
Chamber — the revolver's six slots. A player's bullet count (0–6) is the number of loaded slots.
Cycle — one full loop of turns from the starting player back to themselves. The bar grows once per cycle.
Saving grace — the bullet-reset combo. Three J/Q/K/A same-suit, or three-of-a-kind face/ace, jokers wild.
Sudden death — the deck-exhaustion shot round. Everyone pulls in order of total.