The Book of Card Games: The Complete Rules to the Classics, Family Favorite and Forgotten Games (18 page)

There are three areas to the playing field that you will be using. The area across the top of the playing field is where you’ll place your building stacks. Building stacks are the cards on the table that you will be playing with, moving single cards and groups of cards within these stacks and placing the cards on top of one another if they are available.

In Klondike, seven building stacks are dealt out horizontally. The first stack on the left has one card facing up. The second stack has one card face down and the top card is face up. The third stack has two cards face down and the top card is face up, and so on, until the seventh stack has six cards face down and the top card is face up. The remainder of the cards are placed face down in a stockpile, located in the upper left corner of the playing field (above the building stacks), with a waste pile below it. The stockpile allows you to continue the game when you are unable to move any more cards within the building stacks. The waste pile is used for cards that are turned over from the stockpile that you are unable to use. The card on top of the waste pile is available for play, but the cards beneath that are unavailable for play until you first use the cards above.

You’ll want to leave a third area for the suit stacks, which will be four stacks of cards in the upper right-hand corner of the playing field. Filling up the suit stacks is the goal of the game. You’ll be building each stack from ace to king in one suit. If you can get all of your cards into those suit stacks, you win!

In playing Klondike (and almost all solitaire games), you move cards and sequences of cards around the playing field, and you need to be constantly on the lookout for an available play. If you have an ace that is showing, and as aces show during play, they should be immediately moved to an open suit stack. You can add to the suit stack with the next sequential value in that same suit (for instance, you can place a 2♥ on an A♥).

Within the building stacks, a card may only be moved onto another card if it is of the opposite color and if the card it is being placed on is of a value one higher—for instance, you can place a Q♥ on a K♠. You can move multiple cards onto another card as long as they are in a sequence and the top card is being moved to a card that is of opposite color and next higher value. That is, you can move a sequence of 7♣ 8♥ 9♠ onto a 10♥ or 10♦). A king has the highest value and may not be placed on any other number. If you clear the top card (facing up) from a stack by moving it to another stack or by moving it to a suit stack, you may turn over the next card in the pile that is facing down. If you clear all the cards in a stack, you may move any king into that empty space. If you can no longer move any cards, you may turn over the first three cards from your stockpile onto your waste pile, but only the top card is available for play. If it does not play, or when you can no longer move any more cards, you may turn over another three cards from the stockpile onto the waste pile. When you’re out of cards in the stockpile, turn over the waste pile and move it back up to become the stockpile again, and continue drawing cards in sets of three as needed.

Strategy is a factor in the game of Klondike when you have multiple choices of moves. For example, you might have a 7♦ open and the option to move a 6♣ from the waste pile or a 6♠ from a building stack. If you move the 6♣ from the waste pile, you might be opening up more cards within the waste pile that will help you later. But if you move the 6♠ from a building stack, you might be opening up more cards within that stack. You won’t know if your move was the right one until the game ends—either with all fifty-two cards in the suit stacks, or when no further cards may be moved.

NUMBER OF PLAYERS:
Four

EQUIPMENT:
One deck of eighty cards (four copies each of A, K, Q, J, 10 in four suits)

TIME:
One hour

PARTNERSHIP:
Yes

COMPLEXITY:
Medium

Pinochle is a mid–nineteenth-century American game with similarities to the older European game of bezique (see previous). The objective of pinochle is to be the first team to score 500 points or more through bidding and playing multiple hands. The cards rank from high to low as ace, ten, king, queen, and jack. A random dealer is chosen and deals out the entire deck, face down, one at a time, to all four players.

A round of bidding begins with the player on the dealer’s left. When it’s your turn, you can choose to bid or pass. If you bid, you state the number of points that you plan to win in that hand. The opening bid must be at least fifty points and every bid must go at least one point higher. If the bidding reaches sixty points, each bid must go at least five higher. If you pass, you are not allowed to re-enter the bidding. The bidding ends when three players pass. If the first three players pass, the dealer must bid. The highest bidder gets to choose the trump suit and it must be a suit in which the player has a marriage (a king and queen in that suit). If the high bidder has no suit with a marriage, the bidder’s side loses points equal to the value of their bid and a new hand is dealt.

A bidding system can be established to convey information to your partner about the melds you have in your hand. A common system is that a jump in points while bidding represents ten melds. So if a player opens with a bid of 53, the “3” indicates to his partner that he has thirty melds.

After the trump is named, you and the other players each reveal any of your melds face up on the table. Possible melds and their values are as follows.

Pinochle Meld Values

Cards may be part of multiple melds at the same time, with the exception that a king and queen of trump may not be part of both a royal marriage and a run.

The game begins with the highest bidder leading the first trick, laying down any one card from his hand or melds. Starting with the player to his left and continuing clockwise, you will each play one card to the trick from either your hand or the melds that you laid down earlier. The goal during this stage of play is to take tricks with aces, tens, and kings. When it’s your turn, you must follow the suit of the card led and beat the highest card in play, if able. If you cannot follow suit, you must play a trump if able, and if a trump has already been played, you must beat that trump if you can. If a suit other than trump is led, and one of the other players lays a trump card, the remaining players may play a card of the original suit led and do not need to beat it. The player who lays the highest card of the suit led, or the highest trump, wins that trick and leads the next one. If two of the exact same cards are played, the first player to play the card outranks the second.

After all twenty tricks have been played, each team receives one point for each ace, ten, and king taken. The team who won the last trick receives another two points. Points from the melds are then added. If the side that won the bid scores at least as many points as it bid, both sides add their scores to their cumulative point totals. If the bidding side fails to make its bid, they receive negative points equal to the amount they bid and score nothing for their melds. The opponents keep their score for the hand and add it to their running total.

There are several variations of pinochle, especially in the scoring of the game. You can pretty much choose to score the game however you would like—including counting kings and queens as five points, or counting aces, tens, and kings as 100 points instead of ten. Another variation is that after the bidding reaches 100, bid increments must be in tens. You can play so that the bidding round only goes around the table one time. You can also play a variation in which the two players on the high bidder’s team can exchange three cards simultaneously, face down, with each other.

NUMBER OF PLAYERS:
Two

EQUIPMENT:
One deck of thirty-two cards (A, K, Q, J, 10, 9, 8, 7 of each suit)

TIME:
One hour

PARTNERSHIP:
No

COMPLEXITY:
Medium

Piquet is more than 500 years old and originated in France, where it was an extremely popular game for many years. The modern rules, established in 1882, are the same as those described here. Because it is a French game, many of the rules use French words and terminology. In piquet, the goal is to score more points than your opponent and to score 100 points or higher (called “getting over the Rubicon”). Aces are high, and sevens are low. You’ll each cut the deck, and then whoever picks the highest card acts as the first dealer.

Dealing alternates between the players with each hand. Begin by dealing twelve cards, face down, in groups of two or three (dealer’s choice). The remaining eight cards form the stockpile, or “talon,” and are placed face down in the middle of the table. The dealer is known as the younger hand, and his opponent is known as the elder hand. If you are dealt a hand containing no court cards in any of the suits (jack, queen, or king), you may announce “carte blanche” and score ten points. You do this by rapidly dealing your cards face up on the table before you discard, as below. A new hand is then dealt.