“Receive a copy of the last power played this hand.”

What it does (for you in hands normally):

Playing this card the right way, it almost makes more sense to call it the Mulligan rather than the Clone. In hapless hands this can re-create just any power an opponent uses, but that’s a waste of this – the cheapest yet arguably most versatile of PowerUp cards. Say you are doing iffy in the chip counts. Let’s say your stack amounts to 8 big blinds.

The blinds in this game format go up every few hands so this is going to be a very persistent scenario for you. Basically its push/ fold time. Or better yet – “call an all-in” time. You’re holding a Clone, and Upgrade and an EMP in your PowerUp hand, and you’re dealt an offsuit A-3. Someone’s just made it 3X off of the Button and you’re in the small blind. Stealing this bet alone will add ~40% to your stack and given your stack size a full double is very possible as well.

Here’s the play scenario with Clone. First you Upgrade – it doesn’t work out though. You catch a 6 and release your 3 for an A-6 in the whole. More than decent enough to go with 3 handed for 8 BBs but since this is PowerUp and ranges for made hands by the river are inflated, its time to Clone. You get a second Upgrade and try your luck once more. This time you catch suited King and release your 6. EMP for an extra safety measure and push it all in.

Clone just let your look at 4 hole cards and effectively pick the best 2. You could have done the same thing (just more blindly) if you went Reload, then Clone. Either way. you maximized your pre-flop holdings. As you could have also done on the flop, turn or river – and all it cost you was 2 extra Mana (or whatever those units are called in PowerUp)

Is it good?

If you have Mana to burn, and a good PowerUp effect to bounce into – its possibly the best in the PowerUp deck for its pricetag. The only times it’s useless is when it can only Clone used effects like X-Ray – which can’t be used more than 1 time per hand, or EMP. It also becomes pretty weak when coupled with Scanner & Intel as you’re not getting a major leg up on the competition. You simply know what they know. Playing catch-up versus staying one step ahead is a terrible strategy for winning at PowerUp