Hold Up

Contributed by Florent Barraco

This game can be played by 2 to 10 players using a deck of 54 cards (standard 52-card pack plus two jokers).

Shuffle the deck and divide it into 3 piles of 18 cards.

Each player rolls a die and the player who rolls the greatest number plays first.

When it's a player's turn, he turns up the top card of one of the 3 piles. If it's:

• a diamond or a club : he takes it, placing it in front of himself.
• a spade (except the ace of spades) : he puts all the cards he owns in the center of the table (along with the spade card that he just turned up).
• a heart : he takes all the cards in the center of the table and adds them to the cards in front of him.
• ace of spades : he put all the cards he owns in the center of the table (and the ace of spades too) and the next time he turns up a heart he can't take the cards from the center of the table, but just keeps the heart. This only applies to one heart - if he turns another heart after that, he can take the center cards as usual.
• joker : he keeps the joker and takes an extra turn.

When there are no card left in the three decks the game ends and the player who has the greatest number of cards is the winner.