Verish' Ne Verish'

• Introduction
• Players and Cards
• Deal
• Play
• Variants

Introduction

This game is the Russian equivalent of the game known in English as I Doubt It: the Russian name means "Trust - don't trust". The object, as usual in this type of game, is to get rid of all one's cards.

This page is based on information from Leo Broukhis and Andrew Savinykh.

Players and Cards

This game is for 2-6 players, rarely more. 3 or more players use a standard 52 card deck; a shortened deck (36 cards - 6 to A) may be used for 2 or 3 players, as it is hard to hold more than 18 cards.

Deal

After the deck has been shuffled, one card is picked at random and put aside face down; all remaining cards are distributed clockwise one at a time among the players face down. Some players may have one more card than others - this does not matter. The player to make the first move is the one who was dealt the first card.

Play

A game consists of several rounds, and each round consists of several moves.

The player to make the first move in a round puts one, two or three of his cards on the table face down and names a rank (not necessarily the rank of the card(s) he just put on the table). For each subsequent move there are two possibilities:

1. The player to make the move (B) has the right to say "I don't trust" and expose the card(s) the previous player (A) put on the table. If the card(s) played by A are not all of the rank that A said, A picks up all the cards on the table and adds them to his hand, the current round terminates, and B starts the next round. If the card(s) played by A were all of the stated rank, then B picks up all the cards on the table, the round terminates, and the next round is started by C, the next player clockwise from B.
2. If B decides not to expose A's play, he says "I trust" (or says nothing, because "I trust" is assumed if nothing is said) and puts one, two or three of his cards on top of the pile of cards already on the table, repeating aloud the same rank which was said by the previous player.

At the end of each round, the player who picked up the cards may remove all groups of 4 cards of the same rank, if any, from his hand, show them to other players and put them away. Note that the rules don't force a player to throw away all groups of four equal cards, but experience shows that this is best done as soon as possible. This is the only case when the number of cards in play decreases.

A player who gets rid of all his cards either by making a move with his last cards, which the next player does not expose, or by being able to throw away all his cards in sets of four at the end of a round, does not participate in the current game any more.

Since one card was put aside at the start of the game, the other three cards of this rank remain in the game until the end. The loser is the last player who is left holding one or more of these cards when everyone else has run out of cards.

Variants

During the play, many players also allow a third option:

3. The player to make the move (B) has the right to say "I trust" and expose the card(s) the previous player (A) put on the table. If the card(s) played by A are not all of the rank that A said, B picks up all the cards on the table and adds them to his hand, and the next round is started by C, the next player clockwise from B. If the card(s) played by A were all of the stated rank, they all go to the discard pile and are not used until the end of the current game. Player B starts the next round.

In this version of the game a players are normally not allowed to discard sets of four equal cards out of the game, but it is legal to begin a round by playing 4 cards.

Some require that when a player plays his last card(s) he does not immediately leave the game. He must wait until the end of the current round and if the turn to play comes around to him again he must either trust (option 3) or not trust (option 1) - option 2 is not possible since he has no cards. If he chooses wrongly he picks up the cards and is still in the game.