Welcome to the world of Hucklebuck!

Hucklebuck is a cool card game that gained popularity in the 1990s. It’s a lot like another game called Bourre. Anyway, there are different ways to play Hucklebuck, but I’ll tell you about the most popular rules.

Let’s Talk Cards and Deals

For Hucklebuck, you’ll need a deck of 52 cards. Shuffle those cards up and give each player 5 of them. The rest of the cards go face down to make a draw pile. Take the top card from the draw pile and turn it over to find out the “trump” suit for the round.

Is it “In” or “Out”?

When there are more than four players in a game, some players may choose not to participate in the current round. Starting with the player on the left of the dealer, each person declares whether they will stay in or opt out for that round. If someone decides to bow out, the dealer collects their cards and puts them face down in a discard pile.

In a game with five players, only one person is allowed to bow out. In a game with six players, two players can choose not to participate. And in a game with seven players, three players have the option to bow out.

DRAW

Now it’s my turn to tell you about the next part of the game. The players who are still in the game have a chance to trade some cards if they want. The first player to go is the one sitting to the left of the dealer. They can choose how many cards they want to swap and they give them to the dealer facing down. The dealer then takes the same number of cards from the draw pile and gives them to the player, also facing down. The cards that the dealer collects are kept facing down and put on the discard pile. If a player doesn’t want to trade any cards, they simply say “pass”.

LET’S GET PLAYING!

Alright, let me break it down for you. When we play this card game, the person sitting on the left side of the dealer goes first – that’s called “leading the trick.” They can pick any card from their hand and play it. Then, the play continues around the table, and everyone has to follow the same suit if they can. But if they don’t have a card from that suit, they can play any card they want. The important thing is that the highest-ranking card of the suit led or the highest-ranking trump card wins the trick. The person who wins the trick gets to lead the next one. We keep going like this until all five tricks have been played and won.

SCORING

Here’s how the scoring works. For each trick you win, you earn 1 point. But if you can’t win any tricks, you lose 3 points. Don’t worry, though – your score can’t go below zero.

WINNING

The goal is to be the first player to reach 11 points or more. If there’s a tie, we just keep playing until someone breaks it and wins the game. Simple as that!