Pitty Pat
Pitty Pat is a simple card game for two to five players. Players compete to get rid of cards in their hand by matching them with the top card of the discard pile. The game is quite popular in the Central American country of Belize, and has been described as that country’s national card game.
Object of Pitty Pat
The object of Pitty Pat is to be the first player to get rid of all of your cards by forming them into pairs.
Setup
Pitty Pat is played with one standard 52-card deck of playing cards. If you want to give your players the best possible gaming experience, and avoid sticky, bent, or torn cards, you’re going to want to use a deck of Denexa 100% Plastic Playing Cards.
Shuffle and deal five cards to each player. Place the deck stub in the center of the table, forming the stock. Then, turn the top card of the stock face up; this card, the upcard, is the first card of the discard pile.
Game play
The player to the dealer’s left goes first. They compare the upcard with the cards in their hand. If they hold any card of the same rank as the upcard, they discard that card. They may then discard any other card they wish (which becomes the new upcard), and the turn passes to the player to their left.
If the player doesn’t have any cards that match the rank of the upcard, they turn over a new card from the stock. If they can match this new upcard, they discard the matching card and any other card from their hand, as before. Regardless of whether they can play or not, the turn then passes to the left. The next player then tries to match against the new upcard, and so on.
Game play continues until one player runs out of cards. That player is the winner.
Jack Change It
Jack Change It is a shedding-type game for two to six players. Its simplicity makes it a popular game for children. Like the commercial game Uno, Jack Change It takes the basic gameplay mechanic of Crazy Eights and extends it by adding special abilities to the other cards in the game.
Object of Jack Change It
The object of Jack Change It is to be the first player to run out of cards.
Setup
Jack Change It uses a standard 52-card deck of playing cards. You want the best for your game, so you want to use a deck of Denexa 100% Plastic Playing Cards.
Shuffle and deal seven cards to each player. Place the deck stub in the center of the table, forming the stock, and turn its top card face-up next to the stock. This card, the upcard, is the first card of the discard pile.
Game play
Play begins with the player to the dealer’s left. They may play a card from their hand to the discard pile so long as it matches the upcard in either suit or sequence. After they do so, play passes to the next player to the left, who must then match the new upcard. If a player has no legal plays, they draw one card from the deck and the turn passes to the left.
Additionally, several cards are classified as trick cards, which have a special effect on game play. A player may not play a trick card as their final card of the hand; if a trick card is the only card remaining in a player’s hand, they must draw. The trick cards are:
- 2s: When a 2 is played, the next player must draw two cards from the stock. However, if they possess a 2 themselves, they may play it instead, and the next player after them must draw four cards (two for each 2 played), and so on until someone is unable to avoid drawing cards.
- 8s: When an 8 is played, the next player’s turn is skipped.
- Jacks: When a jack is played, the player calls “Jack change it to…” and names one of the other three suits. The next player must play a card of that suit, as if the upcard was a card of that suit.
- Queens: Queens are only considered trick cards in games of three or more players. A queen reverses the order of game play, so that if play is proceeding to the left, it proceeds to the right after the queen is played, and vice versa.
- A♥: When the A♥ is played, the next player must draw five cards from the stock. The A♥ may be played in combination with a 2 (the only time two cards may be played at once) to cause the player to draw seven cards. The A♥ may be blocked by playing the 5♥; in this case, no cards are drawn.
Should the stock be depleted, set the current upcard aside, shuffle the rest of the discard pile and turn it face-down to form the new stock.
Game play continues until one player has discarded all of their cards. That player is the winner.
See also
President
President (also known under a number of colorful titles, such as Bum, Scumbag, and Asshole) is a game of Asian origin, bearing some similarity to Thirteen. Like Thirteen, the object of the game is to get rid of all of your cards, and play progresses with each player playing progressively higher ranks of cards (some group them together as climbing games). President has the novel feature of assigning each player a rank based on how well they did in the last round and having them rearrange themselves according to the ranking.
President is best for three to seven players.
Object of President
The object of President is to avoid being the last player to hold cards.
Setup
President uses the standard 52-card deck. You can use any deck of cards, but if you use Denexa 100% Plastic Playing Cards, you’ll definitely appear a lot more presidential.
You will need to establish a rank system, with one rank for each player. The top rank is something suitably impressive or positive and the last rank is typically something derogatory. One example for a six-player game would be President, Vice President, Governor, Lt. Governor, Citizen, Asshole. You could also use military ranks, ranks of nobility, job titles from your workplace—use your imagination. For the purposes of illustration, we will use the ranks just mentioned whenever the ranking system comes up.
You also need to establish chairs for each rank. The President should have the nicest and most comfortable chair, with the next-nicest sitting to the left and being occupied by the Vice President, and so on around the table to the Asshole, whose chair is to the President’s right and is the most unpleasant seat available—like a wooden crate, a backless stool, or the like. Some players also prefer to have silly hats that the holder of each rank is required to wear.
Shuffle and deal the cards as far as they will go. Some players may receive more cards than others. They’ll just have to deal with that, though.
Card ranking
President uses the same unconventional card ranking that Thirteen does. Aces rank high, but twos rank even higher than the ace. That means that the lowest card in play is the three, giving us a rank progression of (high) 2, A, K, Q, J, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3 (low). Unlike in Thirteen, however, suits do not matter.
Game play
The player with the 3♠ goes first. That player plays it face up to the table, either singly, or with any number of additional threes. The next player to the left plays the same number of cards of a higher rank (e.g. if the first player laid down a pair of 3s, the next player would have to lay down a pair of 4s or higher). The number of cards must match exactly with what the first player set down (so a pair must be followed by a pair, and not three of a kind, etc.). If a player cannot or doesn’t want to play on a particular turn, they pass, although they can still elect to play the next time it’s their turn.
Each player continues playing cards of ascending rank until all players pass except the last person to play. This player is then permitted to lead off, playing any number of cards of the same rank that they choose to.
The game continues in this manner until one player runs out of cards. This player is declared to be President, and play continues with the player to the left, as normal. This President-elect takes no further part in the hand. As more and more players run out of cards, they too receive titles and sit out of the game. Finally, the last player to run out of cards gets the last good rank, and the player stuck with cards becomes the Asshole.
Players now “take office” for the next hand, rearranging themselves to sit in the seats assigned to their new rank. The Asshole is required to perform the game-running duties for the next hand, including clearing the cards away from the last hand, shuffling, and dealing. The Asshole is also required to surrender their highest-ranked card to the President, who chooses any card they wish from their hand and passes it back to the Asshole. The next round begins, with the President playing first, leading with any card they wish.
See also
