Nerve gives you one decision and then asks it again until somebody blinks: push the pot for another point, or bank what is already in it. We wrote the game and solved it, so this guide can be specific about where a push stops paying for itself, how much the scoreboard moves that answer, and what the final turn is actually worth.
The arithmetic is already done for you
The bust chance starts at 3% on an empty pot and climbs by 1.8 points for every point sitting in it: 12% at five, 16% at seven, 21% at ten, 30% at fifteen. The exact figure is printed under the ring, so there is no mental arithmetic to do — but it is worth knowing where the line falls.
One more push wins you exactly one point and risks the entire pot. At a pot of seven you are risking seven to win one, at 16%, and that is precisely where the trade turns against you: seven is the break-even. If the scoreboard did not exist, "bank at seven" would be the whole game.
The scoreboard moves the answer — less than you would guess
It does exist, so the right stopping point is a function of the score, and solving the game exactly produces 19 distinct stopping points across the board. The direction is the intuitive one: being behind should make you greedier, being ahead should make you duller. The size of the adjustment is the surprising part.
Level, the solver banks at six or seven. Ten points down, seven or eight. Ten points up, five or six. That is the entire spread — this is a game of plus or minus two, not one where trailing badly should double your risk. The one place the answer moves sharply is near the line: at 38 against their 20 it banks at two, because two is enough.
Crossing the line is not winning
Reaching forty hands your opponent one final turn, and the total you crossed on is the bar they have to pass. That makes overshooting worth something, and it turns their turn into the only forced decision in the game: they need exactly your total minus theirs plus one, and they push until they have it.
Those odds are worth carrying in your head, because they tell you whether to keep pushing before you cross. A responder needing five points gets them 71% of the time; needing eight, 45%; needing ten, 30%; needing twelve, 18%; needing fifteen, 7%. Between two players choosing well, 17% of last-licks turns are stolen — so a lead you crossed with is safe about five times in six, and never more than that.
What the three CPU settings actually are
Two of them are a single number. EASY banks at four, NORMAL banks at eight, and HARD solves the position before every decision using only the numbers you can also see. Measured over 200,000 matches: opening against HARD, the EASY habit wins 26% of them and the NORMAL habit 45%.
The best fixed number a person could possibly adopt is seven, and it still wins only 43% against HARD across both seats. Degenerate play — always push, always bank — loses 100%. The skill in this game is not precision, then. It is being willing to change your answer when the score changes.
Three habits that cost nothing to adopt
Never bank a pot of zero: it is a legal move that does nothing except hand over the turn. Do not chase your opponent's spectacular bust, because their bad luck did not move your odds by a single percentage point and feeling invincible is the fastest way to give a lead back. And in the last-licks turn, push to the number you need and stop — one point past the target is a free roll of the dice with nothing to win.
The short version
- Seven is where a push stops paying for itself. Start there.
- Adjust by about two: greedier when behind, duller when ahead.
- Near the line, take the smallest pot that crosses — unless they are close enough to steal it straight back.
- Crossing sets the bar. If they only need five, they will get it 71% of the time.
- In the final turn the correct pot is not a judgement call. It is arithmetic, and it is on the screen.
- A fixed habit loses to a line that adjusts, and which fixed number you picked barely matters.
If you like turn-based games where nobody needs fast hands, games to play with your partner covers the rest of them, and the full Originals lineup has everything we have built.
