We report on the first steps of an ongoing project to add gauge observables and gauge corrections to the well-studied strong coupling limit of staggered lattice QCD, which has been shown earlier to be amenable to numerical simulations by the worm algorithm in the chiral limit and at finite density. Here we show how to evaluate the expectation value of the Polyakov loop in the framework of the strong coupling limit at finite temperature, allowing to study confinement properties along with those of chiral symmetry breaking. We find the Polyakov loop to rise smoothly, thus signalling deconfinement. The non-analytic nature of the chiral phase transition is reflected in the derivative of the Polyakov loop. We also discuss how to construct an effective theory for non-zero lattice coupling, which is valid to $O(beta)$.
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