Welcome to Amerikaner!

Hey there! Have you heard of Amerikaner? It’s a super fun card game where you have to guess how many tricks you’ll win. Depending on whether you’re right or wrong, you’ll score points or lose them. Cool, right? Let me explain how to set it up and play it with 4 players. I’ll also tell you how to tweak the rules for 3 or 5 players!

Getting Started

First things first – we need to decide who will be the dealer. You can do that by choosing someone randomly. After each round, the dealer will pass the role to the player on their left. The dealer will shuffle the cards and then the person on their right will cut the deck. Each player will then be dealt 12 cards, one at a time. Oh, and don’t forget about the kitty – it’s made up of the 4 remaining cards and is placed face down in the middle of the table. Exciting, right?

Card Rankings

Now, let’s talk about the rankings of the cards in Amerikaner. The Ace is the highest-ranking card, followed by the King, Queen, Jack, and so on, all the way down to the lowly 2. Remember these rankings – they’ll come in handy later!

Bids: A Game of Strategy and Risk

When I sit down to play Bids, I face a challenge. How many tricks do I think I and my partner can win? It’s a tough decision, but I must make a bid. I can either pass or bet on a number. However, I have one rule to follow: my bid must be higher than the last one. The lowest bid allowed is 6, and I know that the maximum number of tricks I can win is 12. But here’s the catch: I can actually bid higher than 12! If I do, I’m calling Amerikaner, which means I believe I can win all 12 tricks on my own, without any help from a partner.

Now, let’s talk bidding order. It all starts with the player on the left of the dealer. They have the first say. Will they make a bid or pass? Once they’ve made their decision, it’s time for the next player to do the same. And so it goes, with each player taking their turn, until someone passes. When a player passes, they’re out for the rest of the bidding round. The bidding continues until either three players have passed or someone has bid Amerikaner. And here’s a twist: if all four players pass without making a bid, we have to start again. We discard our hands and deal new ones.

So, here’s the deal, once someone scores the bid, they grab the kitty and toss out any extra cards to get down to 12 again.

Time to Play

The person who won the bidding is up first. If they didn’t bet Amerikaner, they can start with any card. The suit of that card is declared as the trump suit, and they also have to name a card in that suit that they don’t have. If any other player has that card, they have to play it in the first round and become the partner of the one who called the trump suit.

Now, the rest of us gotta play by the rules. We need to follow suit if we can, but if we don’t have that suit, we can play any card we want. The highest trump card wins the round, but if there are no trump cards, then the highest card of the suit led takes the trick. The person who scores the trick gets to lead the next one.

Oh, and if someone calls Amerikaner, they’re playing solo, and there’s no trump suit to worry about.

Now, Let’s Score

When we finish playing all our tricks, we have to tally up the scores. Each player is given a score based on how well they did. If the person who made the bid and their partner won at least as many tricks as they bid, they get points equal to the bid. But if they didn’t reach their bid, they lose points equal to the bid. Everyone else just gets one point for each trick they won.

If someone bids “Amerikaner,” they either get 52 points if they succeed or lose 52 points if they fail. Everyone else still gets one point for each trick they won, even if they didn’t complete “Amerikaner.”

Games with 3 Players and 5 Players

In a game with 3 players, things are a little different. We’ll each get 16 cards to start with, and the lowest bid we can make is 8.

In a game with 5 players, there are some more changes. We’ll each get 10 cards to start with, and the kitty will only have 2 cards. The lowest bid for this game is 5.

Game Over

The game comes to an end when you or one of your fellow players scores 52 points or more. The player with the most points emerges as the winner.

We can say that the game wraps up when someone, including you, manages to accumulate a total of 52 or greater points. As a result, the person who achieves the highest score ultimately claims victory.