The game has an interesting concept, it’s just broken. There’s no reason for both people to not play the king. Since a tie results in cards going back it’s a loop. Good concept, just bad execution.

The game does not work and is a poor set up and does not make sense with the rules that are given 

it didn’t really seem like the game functioned, as both players would always just play their highest card, the card would be returned to their hand, and the cycle would repeated. It is possible we are misunderstanding the rules.