CIAPANO

Hey there! I want to tell you about a super cool card game called Ciapano. It’s a game for 3 to 5 players, and the goal is actually not to win tricks. Yeah, you heard me right, in this game you want to avoid winning tricks. It’s a whole new twist on the classic trick-taking games! Let me explain how it works.

SETUP

So, here’s what you need to do to set up the game. The first dealer is chosen randomly, and then the dealer passes to the right at the start of each new round. Easy peasy, right?

Now, if you’re playing with a special modified deck of cards, you’ll need to remove the 8s, 9s, and 10s. Those cards are out! What you’ll have left in the deck are aces, kings, queens, jacks, 7s, 6s, 5s, 4s, 3s, and 2s. That’s a total of 40 cards.

Once I’ve sorted the deck, I’ll shuffle the cards and deal them out to each player going counterclockwise. If we’re playing with three people, we’ll each get 13 cards. But, I’ll get 14 cards and keep one face down to give to the winner of the last trick. In a game with four players, we’ll each get 10 cards. And in a five-player game, we’ll start with eight cards each. Once everyone has their cards, we can start playing.

The Order of Cards

Here’s how the cards rank in Ciapano. The 3 is the highest card, followed by the 2, Ace, King, Queen, Jack, 7, 6, 5, and 4. There are no trumps in this game.

Certain cards, like Aces, 3s, 2s, Kings, Queens, and Jacks, come with penalties attached to them. Aces have a penalty of 1 whole point, while 3s, 2s, Kings, Queens, and Jacks have a penalty of 1/3 of a point each. In total, there are 11 points of penalties in each round. The distribution of these penalty points among players affects the value of the last trick. You can find more information about scoring in the Scoring section.

Let’s talk about the gameplay of Ciapano. It’s a pretty straightforward trick-taking game. Just like any other game in this genre, it involves leading and following tricks. The game starts with the player to the right of the dealer and continues in an anticlockwise direction.

The player who starts the game leads the trick, and all other players must follow suit if they have a card of the same suit. If they don’t have a matching card, they can play any card they want.

The player who plays the highest-ranked card of the leading suit wins the trick. They also get to lead the next trick.

SCORING

When the round is over and all the tricks have been played, it’s time to add up the penalty scores. Each player looks at the cards they won in their tricks and calculates their score. We can’t have any fractions, so if you end up with a half or a part of a point, we round down to the nearest whole number. For example, if you have 2/3 of a point, it doesn’t count, and if you have 1 1/3 of a point, it counts as 1 point.

In every round, there are a total of 11 points up for grabs. How many points you score determines the value of the last trick. Let me explain with an example. Let’s say Player A scored 4 and 1/3 points, Player B scored 4 and 2/3 points, and Player C scored 1 point along with winning the last trick. Player A’s score is rounded down to 4 points, Player B’s score rounds down to 4 points as well, and Player C gets a score of 3 points. Player C receives 1 point for the cards they won and 2 points for winning the last trick. Adding it all up, we get a total penalty score of 11.

If a player manages to score all 11 penalty points, they’re so good that they actually score zero! But here’s the catch – all the other players score 11 points. It’s like a game within a game!

So, picture this: you’re playing a game and you’ve just scored 31 penalty points! Well, guess what? You’re out of the game! Yep, that’s right. As soon as you hit that magic number, it’s game over for you.

Game Over!

But hey, don’t feel too bad. You know why? Because there can only be one winner, and that winner is the last player standing. So, as soon as everyone else is out of the game, you can celebrate, because you’ve won!