Roller Coaster

A game in which you discard cards in a roller coaster fashion, the values going up, down and loop-the-loop, contributed by Kroc Camen

Any reasonable number can play, using a standard 52-card pack with two jokers (or two or more decks if there are a lot of players). The cards rank cyclically ...-2-A-K-Q-J-10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-A-K-... Suits are irrelevant.

Deal five cards to each player and stack the remainder of the deck centre face down on the table.

Goal: To be the first to discard all the cards from your hand.

The player to dealer's left begins and play continues clockwise. At your turn you may discard an ascending or descending sequence of consecutive cards, placing them face up on top of the discard pile.

At the start, the discard pile is empty, and the first play must be a sequence of at least two adjacent cards. Subsequent plays consist of one or more card and must begin with a card adjacent in rank to the top card of the discard pile, which determines whether any further cards must be in ascending or descending sequence.

Sequences must be ascending or descending, not a mixture. For example, if the top card of the discard pile is a queen you may play just a king, or just a jack, or king-ace, or king-ace-two but not king-queen-jack and not jack-ten-nine-ten.

Ace is both high and low at the same time, so you can wrap around ("loop-the-loop"), i.e. Q K A 2 3, then the next player can go back again, e.g. 2 A K.

Jokers are wild cards and can take the place of any card to fill in gaps in your sequence. The only limit is that a Joker cannot be the first or last card of a sequence, so in order to play a joker you must play at least three cards (at least one before it and at least one after it).

If you cannot or do not wish to discard any cards then you must draw one from the deck, and it is the next player's turn to play.

If the deck is empty, set aside the top card of the discard pile and flip the discard pile to make the new deck.