Mark Kimmerman

Requirements

• 2-4 players
• 1 deck of playing cards
  • 52 cards, no jokers
• 10-60 minutes
  • 2-player, online games can be completed in 10 minutes
  • 4-player, "analog" games with a physical deck take an hour or more

Setup

Choose one player to deal the first hole (the dealer changes to the next player with each hole) and one player to keep score (unless you're playing online, where scorekeeping is automated!).

Gameplay

Gameplay on a hole begins by the dealer shuffling the deck and dealing 6 cards to each player. Then, the dealer places the remaining deck in the middle of the table, face down. Finally, the dealer draws the top card from the deck and places it face up next to the deck, which forms the discard pile.

Each player then organizes their cards into a 3x2 grid:

On their first turn (or anytime before), a player must begin by flipping over any 2 of their cards. For example:

Then, they can either draw a card from the deck or take the card from the discard pile. They can then swap this card with any of their cards (either face up or facedown), in which case the card from their hand is put face up on the discard pile. Or, if they had drawn a card from the deck, they can simply discard it without swapping with anything in their hand.

Simple enough, but how do you decide what to do? Your objective is to get the lowest cumulative score over the course of the 9 holes, and you do so by matching cards in each column. When two cards in a column match, they cancel out and the score for that column is 0. Otherwise, the values of the cards are added together.

For example, here the middle column has a score of 0 (the two 6s cancel out), whereas the rightmost column has a score of 13 (4 + 9).

Cards have the following values:

• A = 1
• 2 = -2
• 3 through 10 = their numeric value
• J = 10
• Q = 10
• K = 0

This hand would have a score of 2: 0 for the first column (the -2s cancel out) plus 4 for the second column (1 + 3) plus -2 for the third column (0 + -2):

Gameplay continues until one person has no more face down cards. That is called going out. After this, the other players have one more turn. If they still have face down cards after their turn, they must be flipped over so that the hole can be scored.

There are a few more rules that make this game very interesting.

Firstly, if a player goes out but then someone beats their score (i.e. they get a lower score), then the player who went out gets a +10 point penalty. When this happens, we say that the player went out and got busted.

Secondly, if any player has four of the same card, no matter where they are arranged in their hand, all other players get a +10 point penalty. This is called getting a four of a kind. Any number of players can get a four of a kind in a given hole.

Finally, if the players go through the entire deck, then the dealer shuffles the discard pile to replace the deck, while preserving the top card of the discard pile. After this happens, any player can choose to go out on their turn by flipping over their last face down card instead of by drawing a card or taking a card from the discard pile.

When the hole is over, everyone's scores are calculated, penalties are added on, and they are written on the scorecard. Each player's current score is their cumulative score for the completed holes.

Gameplay continues in this fashion, with dealing passing clockwise, until 9 holes have been played.

The winner is whoever has the lowest score at the end of 9 holes!