Now I have a task that’s just as challenging: I need to fix deck configurations for both 2- and 3-player games. The standard rules might as well be optimized for this task (at the expense of all others, as my judgments above would indicate): A four-card flop at the outset out of a full deck of 52 cards means that two players can play with six-card hands, and three players can play with eight-card hands—a very simple adjustment. If you want to reduce deck size and/or increase hand size (preferably and) in order to optimize for higher-scoring combinations, it becomes much more delicate to try to balance the three- and two- player experience. One would like to be able to adjust the number of players without too much fiddling with gameplay; that is, preferably you'd like to make as few adjustments as possible in terms of flop size, deck size, hand size, et al when moving between game types. I am resigned that there will have to be more fiddling than in the standard rules.