When physical cards beat a screen
Most estimation happens on a screen now, but a real deck of cards still wins for one specific situation: a co-located team in a conference room without a laptop each, or a facilitator who wants estimation to feel like a game instead of another browser tab. Printed cards need no wifi, no login, and no device - just paper and scissors.
How to use these
- Pick a deck above - Fibonacci is the standard choice for most teams; T-shirt sizes work better for early-stage roadmap sizing; Powers of 2 suit teams that want even coarser gaps. (Read why the gaps matter before picking.)
- Click Print this deck and use your browser's print dialog - "Save as PDF" works exactly the same as printing to paper, if you'd rather keep a digital copy.
- Cut along the card edges. Card stock (or a laminating sheet) holds up better than plain paper for repeated use.
- Bring the deck to your next Scrum Poker session: everyone picks a card face-down, and on a three-count, flips it over - the same private-vote, simultaneous-reveal mechanism online tools enforce automatically.
The honest trade-off
Physical cards can't mask votes the way software can - "face-down" only works if everyone is honest about not peeking, and there's no round history, no CSV export, and no easy way to include a remote teammate. If your team is even occasionally distributed, or you want a record of past estimates for calibration, Rolia Estimation does everything a printed deck does plus enforces the hidden vote structurally and keeps a history - free, with no sign-up. Print a deck for the room that has no laptops; use the online room for everyone else.