Bread and Chocolate
Contributed by JC Ravage, Jimmy Kaplowitz, and Marc Jaffee.
"Bread and Chocolate" is played with a normal 52-card deck, and the rules are as follows:
1) Each player is dealt six cards.
2) From the top of the rest of the deck, two cards are taken. One is placed face up on top of the other, which is face down. Part of the back of the face-down card, however, must be showing.
3) The player whose turn it is first has the choice of "spreading," "flipping," or "passing." "Spreading" is only a choice if the face-up card is red, and consists of turning over cards from the top of the deck and placing them face up onto the face-up card until a black card is turned over. "Flipping" means turning the face-up card face-down and the face-down card face-up. "Passing" means doing neither, thus giving the second player the same choice. Once one player has chosen to "flip" or "spread," or both players have "passed," gameplay begins. "Flipping" or "spreading" counts as the use of a turn--i.e. if one player does either, then the other player plays first.
4) The object of the game is to go out (run out of cards) exactly.
5) On each turn, a player must play a card either one above or one below
the topmost face-up card, and if he/she cannot make a legal play, he/she
must draw a card from the deck. If the card is one below, the player
must discard face-down onto the face-down card drawn earlier a number of
cards from his/her hand equal to the number on the card he/she has
played. If the card is one over, the player must draw from the deck a
number of cards equal to the number on the card he/she has played.
Face-cards have no value. Aces count as ones, but are also considered
to be one greater than a king.
A play is not legal if it requires the player to discard more cards than
are in his/her hand.
IF A LEGAL PLAY CAN BE MADE, IT MUST BE MADE.
6) There is one exception to the above rule. If a player holds a black card of the same value as the top face-up card, and the face-up card is red, the player can play his/her card for no gain or penalty. By doing so, the player starts a "spread." During a spread, players may play cards of the same rank, regardless of color, without gain or penalty. A spread is ended when a card of the next higher or lower rank is played, with the usual side effects occurring.
7) If the deck would run out of cards if a turn is completed normally, then the player on whose turn it would run out draws only enough cards so that only one remains in the deck. Then, the face-up cards are turned face-down and become the new deck, the face-down cards are turned face-up and become the new playing pile, and the one remaining card of the deck becomes the new face-down card.
If these rules are unclear, or if you have a way of improving Bread and Chocolate, feel free to e-mail JC at Quiet__Man@Juno.com or Jimmy at jimmy@kaplowitz.org.