by Joe Wrighter

Created on: January 17, 2007   Last Updated: October 13, 2010

"Up and Down the River"

As far as I know, this is not a very well-known card game, but everyone I know that has played it has really enjoyed it. It's a fairly simple game that is especially easy to understand if the players know hearts or spades.

HOW IT STARTS: Every player is dealt out 10 cards. They are allowed to look at their cards. The rest of the cards are stacked in the middle. The top card from this pile is turned over. Whatever suit that card happens to be is the "trump suit". This means that any card of that suit will beat any card of the other suits.

NEXT STEP: Each player assesses the cards in their hand and predicts how many tricks they will take. A "trick", for those not familiar with spades or hearts, is taken after each player lays down a card in turn; the player who put down the highest valued card (Ace highest, 2 lowest) wins the trick. How many tricks a player predicts should depend on how many high cards they have, and how many cards of the trump suit.

PLAY BEGINS: The player to the left of dealer lays down a card in the middle. This card can be any suit except the trump suit. All the other players must play one card of that suit, unless they don't have a card of that suit. In that case, they may play a card of another suit. Unless that suit is the trump suit, they cannot win the trick. Once someone plays a trump suited card, this suit can be played at any time, including the first card laid down.

SCORING: Once the final trick is taken, everyone adds up their tricks. Those that correctly predicted the number of tricks they would take get 10 points for every trick. Those that take more or less tricks than predicted are assigned negative points, -10 for every trick they are over or under their prediction. If a player predicts 0 tricks and achieves this, 20 points are awarded. Points are added up and round one is over.

THE REST OF THE GAME: After the first round is done, the deck is reshuffled and dealt out again. This time, only 9 cards are dealt out. This continues each round until only one card is dealt out to each player on the 10th round. When this round is reached, each player cannot look at their card. Instead, they must put their card up to their forehead face out, so all the other players can see what they have. Each player must guess if they are the one to take the trick based on what they see others have. Once this round is over, the number of cards dealt out begins going up again, until 10 is reached again on the 20th round. This is the final round, and whoever has the most points at the end of the round wins the game.

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