Padan

A card game for two players, contributed by Dan Vetter (davetter49@netscape.net)

The 2's are removed from a standard deck of cards. They and the remaining 48 cards are shuffled separately.

The 48 cards are dealt face down into 8 piles of 6 cards each, arranged so that 4 are in front of each player.

Each player looks at his 4 hands, 1 at a time. Once s/he has finished reading a hand and put it back down, s/he may not look at it again. Once the reading is completed, the dealer turns up the top 2. Its suit is trump.

With trump determined, the non-dealer chooses for his first hand any of the face down piles, that is, any of the four that he has seen or any of the four that he has not. The dealer then picks up any remaining hand.

Each player selects one card from his hand, shows it to his opponent, and discards it face down.

Play begins with the dealer leading a card. The object of the game is to win tricks using standard rules: players must follow suit if possible and the winner of a trick leads the next card.

When the players have only 3 cards left in their hands, they select another hand from those on the table, but this time the dealer has first choice. From the nine cards now in hand, one is discarded as before and play continues with the last trick winner leading.

This procedure, with the first choice alternating, is followed each time the players have only three cards left After all the cards have been played, the tricks are totalled. The first player to reach 50 (or some pre-determined number) is the winner.

Variation

Just before the third piles of cards are to be selected, the trump is changed by turning over one of the three remaining twos.