Few pop culture phenomena are as huge as Star Wars, which boasts a rich universe that's continually fleshed out through fresh content yearly. Case in point, a recent Disney announcement confirmed the development of a new Mandalorian movie—one that’ll undoubtedly expand on the stories of Din Djarin, Grogu, and the creed of the Mandalore people. The franchise’s attention to detail even extends to the creation of a unique gaming culture centered around one particular card game: Sabacc.
This pastime is so realistic that it even boasts multiple variants. That includes Kessel Sabacc. It debuted in 2024 as a Star Wars Outlaws mini-game that comes with high rollers you can beat to earn extra in-game credits. With players finding Kessel Sabacc as exciting to play as real-world poker, developers released the DLC “Wild Card”—which involves infiltrating a full-blown Sabacc tournament—just three months after Outlaws’ initial release.
These similarities suggest that Kessel Sabacc is based on poker itself. But is it really the Star Wars universe’s answer to one of the real world's most popular card games? Given the parallels between the two games, the answer is arguably yes.
How Kessel Sabacc grew into Star Wars lore
Sabacc itself had a pretty unremarkable beginning. In a cut line from The Empire Strikes Back, Han Solo tells Princess Leia that Lando Calrissian won Cloud City in a game of “sabacca.” Science fiction author L. Neil Smith leveraged that seemingly impactless piece of information when writing The Lando Calrissian Adventures novel series, effectively cementing the card game—now known as Sabacc—as part of the Star Wars universe. By 1989, it became available to purchase and play at home, something that required the creation of actual mechanics for the game.
From here, it fell into disuse—that is, until the release of the 2014 novel A New Dawn. Though author John Jackson Miller only mentioned Sabacc in passing here, that was enough to make it available for new Star Wars content. Soon after, the game finally began appearing on screen, namely in Star Wars Rebels (2015) and Solo: A Star Wars Story (2018). A revamped physical version of Sabacc was released in 2019. By 2022, hotel guests at Walt Disney World could play it as part of the Halcyon Galactic Starcruiser role-playing experience.
However, it wasn’t until the 2024 release of Outlaws that Kessel Sabacc truly came into play. The game’s story starts on main character Kay’s home planet of Cantonica, a locale specifically known for offering a diverse range of gambling opportunities. That includes fathier betting in Canto Bight, which finds its real-world roots in horse racing—and, of course, casinos where one can play Kessel Sabacc, a Sabacc variant specifically created for Outlaws. Aside from featuring heavily in the plot for the video game, Kessel Sabbac is a major catalyst that kickstarts the action in the subsequent Wild Card DLC, allowing Kay to meet up with none other than Lando himself.
Kessel Sabacc’s real-world roots: poker
Though Sabacc started out as one of George Lucas’ more unremarkable ideas for the franchise, it’s clear that the creatives behind Star Wars effectively expanded on the game—and made it worth playing—by taking inspiration from real-world poker. Sabacc’s variants alone, from Kessel Sabacc to the Corellian Spike featured in 2018’s Solo, similarly mimic Texas Hold ‘em, Omaha, and all the other types of location-inspired poker games you can play in real life. The mechanics of poker and Kessel Sabacc are also pretty similar.
In both card games, players get chips and use them to bet on their hands, which come with rankings that can determine the outcome of each round. The digital Kessel Sabacc gameplay in Star Wars Outlaws also mirrors the experience of playing American online poker. As you'll see on leading poker website ACR Poker, virtual cardrooms provide a digital layout of the playing table and opponents. You get an identical layout in Outlaws, albeit in 3D. In both mediums, you’ll also get an on-table statistics display—a software feature that gives you key information on your cards and the current round to help you make the most informed decisions possible. To ensure each round is exciting and unpredictable, Outlaws' Kessel Sabacc mini-game even uses a random number generator or RNG similar to the iTech Labs-certified RNG leveraged by ACR Poker. This algorithm ensures cards are dealt in a random and unbiased manner. You'll get different hands each time so gameplay doesn't get stale.
Of course, Kessel Sabacc is also a completely unique game. Unlike in poker, for example, your main goal here is to be the last player with chips in stock. Kessel Sabacc also leverages additional “shift tokens” that can give players advantages at the start of each round. Another factor that differs between the two card games is payouts. On the ACR website, online poker winnings can be withdrawn in both fiat or cryptocurrencies via bank or crypto wallet transfer. In the Star Wars universe, Sabacc chips remain the only currency you can get your winnings in—and, unlike real-world poker withdrawals that have monetary value, these only count as in-game currency. However, Sabacc chips can be used for bartering in select parts of the galaxy.
Playing Kessel Sabacc in Star Wars Outlaws
Kessel Sabacc’s cards are pretty easy to understand. They come in two families: Sand (yellow) and Blood (red). Cards range from one to six in value, and each family has three cards per number. A Kessel Sabacc table can accommodate four players plus the dealer, and everyone starts the game with two cards—one from each family. The dealer will similarly reveal two cards to start discard piles for Sand and Blood, respectively.
To become the last person at a Kessel Sabacc table to still have chips, you need to acquire a pair of cards, also known as a Sabacc hand. The highest-ranking hand in the game is a pair of “Sylops,” which are special cards that act like blanks. A Sylop and a one, for example, will be considered a pair of ones. A pair of Sylops, however, is more valuable as there are only two Sylop cards available in a game. A pair of ones is considered the next highest hand ranking, all the way down to a pair of sixes in last place.
Since you’re not likely to immediately acquire a pair with your starting cards, you need to spend Sabacc chips—a limited resource—to replace your cards. You have three turns, and thus three chances, to create a Sabacc hand per round, and you must always have one Sand and Blood card each. If no one at the table has a pair, the player with cards that have the lowest difference will win the round. A three and four, for example, will win over a four and six as the former only has a difference of one. Play stops when only one player still has chips. Of course, there are some ways to improve your success rate at Kessel Sabacc. Since you can only get shift tokens in the main game, for example, you’ll want to use them wisely. If you know you’re going to lose a round, you’ll also want to discard cards so as to minimize the difference between your hand’s card values. To make Kessel Sabacc more exciting, Outlaws also allows you to periodically use magnetic dice or send Nix to snoop on other players’ cards at the start of your turn.
Though it wasn’t originally intended to be part of the Star Wars universe, Sabacc—and, in particular, Kessel Sabacc—has slowly emerged as a fun aspect of the franchise’s lore. Given what it’s inspired by and how it makes Star Wars Outlaws even more fun to play, Kessel Sabacc truly stands out as the Star Wars universe’s answer to poker.
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