Croquet

A game by Daniel Czech , based on the card game Golf but with numerous twists.

To play you need a full deck of 52 cards and two players. This game can also be played with four players using two decks (play goes clockwise).

To start play you deal six cards face-down to each player, who put them into a 2x3 grid to form that player's field. Each player may peek at three of his/her face-down cards (but keep them face down!). The dealer then deals five cards to each player for his/her hand, in a similar way to other games such as Poker. The top card of the remaining deck gets flipped up on the table to start the discard pile and the remaining 29 cards are the draw deck.

Play starts with the person to the left of the dealer. On a turn, a player can do one of four things:

1. Draw top card of discard pile and discard a card from hand,
2. Draw top card of draw deck and discard a card from hand, or
3. Draw top card of draw deck, then place a card face-down to your field to replace one of the six already there, which is then discarded.
4. Rap his/her knuckles on the table, forfeiting all actions that round and bringing the game to an end.

Note that in this game, unlike Golf, you are not allowed to take a card from the discard pile and place it directly in your field. To accomplish this would require two turns, using one turn to add the discard to your hand (option 1 above) and a separate turn to place it in your field (option 3).

Play continues until the draw deck expires, or one player raps his/her knuckles on the table, signifying he/she wishes to stop the game. Once the game ends, all players reveal the cards in his/her field and the cards in his/her hand, but separately (you will understand this later). Points are scored.

Scoring: A player wants face-cards to be in his field when the game ends. For each face card in his/her field, the player gains a certain number of points:

1 point for each Ace
2 points for each Jack
3 points for each King, and
5 points for each Queen (a little homage to "Alice in Wonderland")

A player only gains this score for face/ace cards that are in the player's field, not in his/her hand. Face/ace cards in a player's hand only count as 1 point each. Additionally, the rank of the lowest-rank card in a player's hand (regardless of suit) is added to a player's hand. The person with the highest point total wins.

Example of Scoring: When the game ends, Jack has the following field: A, K, J, J, Q, 9 and the following hand: 4, 7, 7, 9, A. He gets a total of 13 points for the face-cards in his field (the 9 does not count for any points) and he gets 5 points for the cards in his hand (4 is the lowest card, plus he has 1 face card in his hand, for a total of 5), giving him a total of 18 points.

Things to Remember:

• A player cannot look at the cards in his field during the game.
• Face/ace cards only count as 1 point when in a player's hand.
• Rank cards do not count as any points if they are in the player's field or are not the lowest-rank card in a player's hand.

Note: In fact, it doesn't matter which set of cards are used to play this game, as long as you have about 52 of them for 2 players or 104 for 4 players. You can customize your game by mixing-and-matching several decks together with the desired proportion of various types of card.