Welcome to Aluette!

I’m excited to introduce you to Aluette, a unique card game that’s played by four players in two set partnerships. What sets Aluette apart from other games is that the players in each team don’t combine tricks; instead, they compete against each other within the round.

The objective of Aluette is to win the most tricks in a round. In the event of a tie, the winner is the first team to reach the highest number of tricks.

Getting Started: Setup

When it comes to setting up the first partnerships and determining the dealer, we’ve got a simple process to follow. First, gather all the cards and give them a good shuffle. You can start dealing the cards, face up, to each player. But here’s the catch – once a player gets one of the top four highest-ranking cards, they won’t receive any more cards. This means that once all four of those top cards have been dealt, the partnerships will be assigned.

Now, let me explain how these partnerships work. The players who are lucky enough to get the cards called “monsieur” and “madame” become partners. The same goes for the players who receive the “le borgne” and “la vache” cards. It’s a fair way to team up! Oh, and by the way, the person who gets the “madame” card becomes the dealer for the first round. After that, it’s the person sitting to their left’s turn to deal. Nice and simple, right? And, just so you know, partners sit opposite each other.

Now that we’ve got the partnerships all sorted out, we can start dealing out the cards. Shuffle the deck once more and let the dealer’s right-hand neighbor cut it. Then, each player will receive nine cards, three at a time. By the time everyone has their cards, there should be twelve cards left in the deck.

Once we’re done with that, we can make a little deal. Everyone may decide to join in. 12 cards will start alternating between the player to the left of the dealer and the dealer themselves. All players then take a look at what they’ve got, and choose to discard any extras until they only have nine cards left, keeping only the best ones. Of course, if one player isn’t feeling the whole deal, then we can skip it for this round.

How to Rank the Cards

Hey there, let me explain how Aluette works! In this card game, the winner of a trick is determined by the ranking of the cards. It all starts with the three of coins, also known as monsieur, which is the highest-ranking card. From there, the ranking goes like this: three of cups (madame), two of coins (le borgne), two of cups (la vache), nine of cups (grand-neuf), nine of coins (petit-neuf), two of batons (deux de chêne), two of swords (deux décrit), aces, kings, cavalières, jacks, nine of swords and batons, eights, sevens, sixes, fives, fours, three of swords and batons.

Now, let’s get into the gameplay!

So, here’s how it works: when we play this game, the person sitting to the dealer’s left gets to go first. After that, it’s whoever won the last round who gets to lead the next round. And get this, there are no rules about which cards you can play! You can lead with any card you want, and the others can follow suit. The player with the highest-ranking card wins the trick and gets to lead the next round. Simple, right?

Now, let’s talk about ties. If there’s a tie for the highest card in a trick, things get a little weird. The trick is considered spoiled, and nobody wins that round. But guess what? The person who was supposed to lead the trick gets another chance to lead! Talk about a lucky break.

Oh, and here’s a little secret: it’s actually pretty cool to play last. If you can’t win the trick, spoiling it can be a smart move. Sometimes, being the spoiler is even better than winning!

Now, let’s talk scoring. It’s pretty straightforward, really. The player who wins a trick gets to keep it, face down in front of them. And remember, the person who wins the trick gets to lead the next one. That’s how the game keeps going.

So, here’s what happens after we finish playing all nine tricks. The player who managed to win the most tricks in their partnership gets a point. Simple, right? But what if there’s a tie? Well, the tiebreaker goes to the player who received that number of tricks first. Fair enough!

Now, let’s talk about a special rule called mordienne. This rule comes into play when a player wins the highest number of tricks consecutively at the end, even if they didn’t win any tricks at the start. For example, let’s say you lost the first four tricks but then won the next five in a row. That’s pretty impressive, right? Well, for achieving mordienne, you get rewarded with not just one, but two points. It’s like a bonus for showing your skills!

Now, let’s get into the signals.

Okay, so in this game called Aluette, you and your partner have this cool thing where you can actually signal important cards to each other. It’s like a secret code! And don’t worry, we’ve got you covered with a set of fixed signals. Just take a look at the table below. But remember, you don’t want to be giving away any unnecessary signals, and if you do need to signal, be super sneaky about it, so the other team doesn’t catch on!

As a player in the card game, I always find it fascinating how we communicate with signals without saying a word. Let’s explore the secret language of signs in the game:

What is Being Signaled	The Signal
Monsieur	Look up without moving your head
Madame	Lean head to one side or smirk
Le Borgne	Wink
La Vache	Pout or purse lips
Grand-neuf	Stick out thumb
Petit-neuf	Stick out pinkie
Deux de Chêne	Stick out index or middle finger
Deux écrit	Stick out ring finger or act as if you are writing
As (Aces)	Open your mouth for as many times as you have aces.
I have a useless hand	Shrug your shoulders
I’m going for mordienne	Bite your lip

END OF GAME

Well, now that we’ve learned these secret signals, it’s important to understand how the game is played. Each game consists of 5 deals, with the original dealer getting to deal twice. The partnership that scores the highest is the ultimate winner.