Out-rank three rivals, dump your hand first to take the throne, and dodge the bottom rung.
Someone leads a single card or a set of equal-rank cards. Each player in turn must beat it with the same count at a higher rank or pass. Empty your hand first to climb toward President; finish last and you become Scum, owing tribute next round.
President is the Western form of a much older idea: the climbing game, where each play must beat the last and the round ends when someone empties their hand. Its relatives include Zheng Shangyou in China, Tiến lên in Vietnam and Daifugō in Japan.
What the Western version added was the social machinery around the cards. Finishing first makes you president; finishing last makes you scum, and the titles are not decoration — they determine who hands their best cards to whom at the start of the next round, so the game deliberately makes winning easier for whoever is already winning.
It travels under a great many names, most of them less polite than President, and the commercial editions are frank about the hierarchy: The Great Dalmuti turns the whole thing into a deck with twelve ranks of peasant. It is a game about unfairness that is honest about being one.
President is an original free browser version of the classic climbing-and-shedding card game, where social rank flips each round with the cards. Play in your browser, no sign-up.