Friday, December 11, 2009

G'nerts!

Here are the rules for another card game that we used to play in our youth. I'm also teaching the kids. It's good for 2, 3, or 4 as needed.

G’nerts
Remove the jokers from two decks with different backs. Each player takes a deck and shuffles it. They switch decks and each quickly deals out a Pile of 13 cards face down and a row of 4 face up cards to form your Stock. Flip the top card of your Pile face up. If you are playing with a partner, they usually handle the Pile. The remaining cards form your Stack. Between both Stocks is a Scoring Area.

Cards are played into the Scoring Area in sequence by suit starting with the aces and ending with the kings. For example, a 2 of hearts may only be played onto an ace of hearts. There is enough room for all eight aces to be in the Scoring Area at once. Both players are able to play on top of the cards played by either player. If both players try to play the same card at the same time, the card played first remains and the other player has to put their card back.

Cards in your Stock may be played in descending order alternating color between red and black (a red 5 may be placed on a black 6). Entire columns in your Stock can be moved as long as they can follow this rule – columns cannot be split. The top card on any column may be played to the Scoring Area as allowed. When a column is empty, either by being moved on to another column or by having the last card played into the Scoring Area, the space is filled with the top card of the Pile.

The remaining cards in your Stack are flipped over in threes by sliding three cards off the top of the Stack and flipping them over without changing the order of those three cards. The top card of these three may be played to the Stock or Scoring Area as allowed. Others cards from this flip are also able to be played as they are revealed. If you are able to play all three cards, you may then play the top of the previous flips as it is revealed. When you flip the last of the Stack, when you are unable to play further from the flips, pick up the flipped cards and start flipping again. As long as one player is able to play, keep flipping through the Stack as new cards played into the Scoring Area affect which cards are able to be played.
When both players are at a standstill, without being able to play any cards from their Pile, Stock, or Stack, they may both agree to take the top card of their Stack and put it on the bottom of their Stack. Then they start flipping by threes again. When they have done this three times, the next time they come to a standstill, the round ends.

The top card of your Pile may be played to the Stock or may be played directly into the Scoring Area as allowed. The new card at the top of the Pile is then flipped face up. When the last card in the Pile is played, either to the Stock or Scoring area, the player calls out “G’NERTS” and all play freezes and the round ends.

When the round ends, all cards in the Scoring area are mixed together and sorted according to the backs. Both players score the number of their cards played into the Scoring Area less double the number of cards left in their Pile. A player can have cards left in their Pile and still score more than their opponent for the round. The totals (plus or minus) are added to their total for the game. The game is usually played to 100 although you can play to higher amounts – 500, 1000, or so on.

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