Card CommonsCard Commons

Goal

Make more marriages than the other two players. A marriage is two of your cards that score together.

Cards

Use 18 cards from a standard deck: the A, 2, 3, 4, and 5 of ♥, ♣, and ♠, and the J♦, Q♦, and K♦. The game is for exactly 3 players.

Starting hand

Deal 6 cards to each player. This is the first hand you pick from.

Play

1. Keep 1 card. Everyone at the same time keeps 1 card from the hand in front of them and puts it face down in front of themselves.
2. Aces go face up. Once everyone has kept a card, any Ace kept on that pick is turned face up for everyone to see.
3. Pass the rest to the left. You then pick from the smaller hand passed to you from the right.
4. Pick 6 times. After the sixth pick every card has been kept. Everyone shows the cards they kept.

Scoring

Pair up the cards you kept to make as many marriages as you can. Each card can be in only one marriage.

• A pair is two cards of the same number: two 2s, two 3s, two 4s, two 5s, or two Aces.
• A royal marriage is an Ace with the J♦, Q♦, or K♦. It’s canceled if you also kept any other card of the Ace’s suit.

The player with the most marriages wins. If players tie, compare their most valuable marriages, then their next most valuable, and so on. From most to least valuable they are: an Ace with the K♦, an Ace with the Q♦, an Ace with the J♦, two 5s, two 4s, two 3s, two 2s, and two Aces. Players still tied share the win.