Anywone out there into black mari? It's a really cool game, basically zipped up hearts (and I tend to lose, but I love it!).
Okay; deal out the pack equally. you may have cards left over which are left out (in the version we play; you could take out some fixed cards beforehand if desired). You initially pass on some cards, the number being fixed beforehand. Usually we go four 3 cards with four players, four cards with three players.
Now in play, person to left of dealer starts the first round (deals cycle leftwards), you just play normal tricks (ie must follow suit if possible, and throw away otherwise, aces high and no trumps). The aim is to avoid getting points; the person with the lowest score wins (tot up the vscores after each round).
Points are; hearts score face value, with jack 11, queen 12, king 13 and ace 14. Also there's the black maria aka the bitch ;) worth 26 points.
That's basically all, except there's a twist; if someone gets all the points (not nec all the tricks, just all the points) everyone else scores the total number of points, which is usually 130. This is known as shooting the moon. WE play that if there's a scoring card out, you only need to get all the points which were dealt, and everyone else scores what wss dealt should someone shoot the moon (eg if the bitch was out and someone won all the hearts, everyone else would get 104 points each).
This last rule really makes the game; you have to balance between getting a low score yourself and not letting anyone else shoot the moon, or just going for the whole lot yourself. The conflicts make it really work.
gooo on, try it. It's great if you're stoned, hehe.
Chris Simmons.
Don't bother, the web page is crap ;)
http://www.york.ac.uk/~cps102
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