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Goal

Get rid of your cards. When one player empties their hand, everybody else scores points for the cards they still hold. The player with the fewest points at the end of the game wins.

Cards

Use the Aces to 9s of a standard deck, 36 cards, and one Joker, which is the Cheat Code. The Ace is the 1, the lowest card. The Cheat Code (Joker) is a 0 of any suit.

Starting hand

Deal 9 cards to each player. Set any cards left over aside, face down, for the rest of the hand. With 4 players 1 card is left over, and with 2 or 3 players several are.

Play

1. Lead one card. The first player plays 1 card face up in the middle of the table.
2. Beat the middle, or pass. Going to the left, each player either plays a set worth more than the middle or passes. You play the same number of cards as the middle holds, or exactly 1 more. Two or more cards must all have the same number or all be the same suit.
3. A set’s value is its numbers read as digits, highest first. A 2 and an 8 are worth 82, and a 2, a 4, and a 9 are worth 942. So a longer set always beats a shorter one.
4. The Cheat Code. Its suit is wild, so it can join any same-suit set. Its number is 0, so it can never join a same-number set. As a digit it always comes last: the Cheat Code with a 9 is worth 90, and on its own it’s worth 0.
5. Take one card back. When you beat a set, take exactly 1 card of the set you beat into your hand and discard the rest. If it was 1 card, you take that card.
6. Winning a round. When every other player has passed in a row, the last player to play wins the round. Discard the middle, and that player leads the next round. A pass counts only for that turn, so you can play again when your turn comes round.
7. Ending the hand. The hand ends as soon as a player’s hand is empty. If you empty it by beating a set, you don’t take a card back. If you’re about to lead and every card in your hand makes one set, play them all at once, which ends the hand.

Scoring

When the hand ends, each player scores 1 point for each card still in their hand, and 5 points for the Cheat Code. Points are bad.

• Deal the next hand. The player to the left of the last hand’s first player leads it.
• The game ends after the hand in which a player reaches 15 points or more. You can agree to play to 10 or 20 instead, or to play a single hand.
• The player with the fewest points wins, and tied players share the win.

Variants

Without the Cheat Code. Leave the Joker out. The deck is 36 cards, so with 4 players every card is dealt.

Playing with your own deck

You need paper and a pencil to keep score. Write one line for each hand, with every player’s points and their new total.

How this version differs

• It uses a standard deck, for 2 to 4 players. The published game, Odin, has 54 cards numbered 1 to 9 in six colors and seats 2 to 6. A suit here is what Odin calls a color. With only four suits, same-suit sets are easier to make and the middle climbs faster.

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