Hey there!

I want to talk to you about a super cool card game called HOLA. It’s a game that you can play with your friends or family, and it’s really fun! You can play with 2, 4, or even 6 players. If you have 4 or 6 players, you’ll need to team up with a partner who sits between your opponents.

The goal of the game is pretty simple – you want to win cards that have points. How do you do that? Well, in each round, you need to match the rank of the first card played in that round or play a special card called a wild card. It’s all about strategy and making smart moves!

If you’re playing with just 2 or 4 players, you can decide before the game starts how many points you need to win. It can be anywhere from 200 to 500 points. But if you’re playing with 6 players, you’ll need to aim for 500 points to win.

Getting Ready to Play

Before you start playing, you’ll need to do a little setup. The first dealer is chosen randomly – it could be anyone! Then, the dealer shuffles the deck (or two decks if there are 6 players) and gives each player 4 cards. The rest of the cards go facedown in the middle of the play area. We call this pile the “stockpile”.

The Cards and How Much They’re Worth

Let me tell you about the cards in this game. They don’t have a fancy ranking or a special suit. The cards that really matter are the 2s and 7s. These are called wild cards, and they have some special abilities that I’m gonna talk about.

Now, there are only a few cards that actually have values in this game. The Aces and 10s are the ones you wanna watch out for. Each of these cards is worth 10 points, and they’re what you’re aiming to win during the game. Oh, and the last trick you take is also worth 10 points, but only in games where there are 2 or 4 players.

Ready to Play?

When we play this game, it all starts with the player to the left of the dealer. They get to go first and play any card they want. The rest of us can follow suit and play any card we want, too. But, in order to beat the card that was led, we have to play a card of the same rank or a wild card. It’s like a battle of cards!

When it’s back to the player who started the trick, there are two choices. They can end the trick and collect the cards won, then lead the next trick. Or, they can keep on fighting for the trick. If they choose to fight, they lead another card and we all have to follow the same rules as before.

We can fight for a trick up to four times, or until we’ve run out of cards. After that, the winner of the trick collects all the cards and leads the next round. Can you imagine having all those cards in hand?

The player who wins a trick is a real champ! They’re the last player to play a card of the same rank or a wild card to the trick. It’s like they’ve mastered the game!

After we finish a round, we’ll start the next one by drawing up to four cards into our hands, starting with the player who led the last trick. If there aren’t enough cards in the stockpile for everyone to draw four, we’ll just divide the remaining cards evenly among us and play the final round with whatever we have.

SCORING

Once we’ve played all the rounds, it’s time to score our piles. The player who won the last trick also gets to add those points to their score. We keep track of our points from round to round, and if we manage to win all the points in a round, we’ll score 170 instead of our total.

If the nondealer or their team scores 50 points or less, we’ll let the same dealer deal the next round. Otherwise, we’ll pass the dealer position to the left.

END OF GAME

The game will continue until one team reaches the required number of points to win. If multiple teams reach that number in the same round, the team with the higher score will be crowned the winner.