Welcome to Michigan!

Hey there! Michigan is a super fun game that you can play with 3 to 8 of your friends. The goal is simple: get rid of all your cards as fast as you can. But there’s a twist! To win, you have to make bids and play certain cards strategically. Plus, you can even play for stakes or just use chips to keep score. Cool, right?

Here’s How to Set Up the Game

First things first, let’s determine who the dealer will be. You can choose randomly, like drawing straws or flipping a coin. The dealer will change with each new round. Now, the first dealer will lay out the cards on the table. These special cards are called “pay cards” and they are the Ace of hearts, King of clubs, Queen of diamonds, and Jack of spades. Neat, huh? Oh, and by the way, the rest of the cards from that deck won’t be used, so you can put them aside.

Let me tell you about this cool card game we can play! We start by laying out some cards in the middle of the table. These cards are where we’ll place our bids. The dealer puts two chips on each card, and then the rest of us put one chip on each card too.

Once the bidding is set, the dealer shuffles the deck and starts dealing. They start with the player on their left and go around the table clockwise. Everyone gets a hand of cards, and there’s an extra hand dealt face down.

Each player looks at their hand, but we don’t use the extra hand for this game. The spare hand just sits there, all facedown and unused.

Card Rankings

In this game, the cards have a ranking. We go with the traditional rankings used in Michigan. The highest ranking card is the Ace, followed by King, Queen, Jack, 10, and so on down to 2.

Gameplay

When we play the game, we each have cards in front of us which we keep for the entire game.

I’ll start playing first, since I’m sitting to the left of the dealer, and then we’ll go clockwise from there. I can choose any suit to start with, but I have to play the lowest card of that suit that I have. The player who has the next highest rank card has to play it, followed by the player who has the next card in rank, and so on. This continues until either someone plays the Ace of that suit or no one has the next card in rank.

When a player plays a card, no one else can follow them. This is called a stop card, and it ends that turn. The player who played the stop card starts the next round by playing the lowest card of any suit they want.

Whenever a player plays one of the pay cards, they get to take all the chips on that card into their own pool.

Hey, let’s talk about how this crazy game works! Here’s the deal: I’ll explain the rules to you, and then we can get playing.

So, basically, the game continues until someone runs out of cards in their hand. It’s a pretty simple concept. Once that happens, the game is over, and any chips that are left on the cards stay there for the next round. Easy peasy, right?

But wait, there’s more!

At the end of each round, the players who still have cards in their hands have to pay up. Yep, that’s right – they have to give one chip for each card they still have to the player who emptied their hand first. Gotta pay the price, I guess.

Now, here’s the thing: the game keeps going until everyone decides they’ve had enough or until there are no more bidding chips left. So, you can keep playing for as long as you want, or until you’re all tapped out. It’s all up to you!

Well, that’s the lowdown on how to play. Now it’s time to gather some friends, grab a deck of cards, and get your game on. Have fun!