Contents
A Game of Nerts (Also Known as Pounce)
Your Goal: Get rid of all the cards in your Nerts pile.
Number of Players: You can play with 2 or more players (6 or more if you play in partnerships).
Number of Cards: Each player needs a standard 52-card deck, and you can also use Jokers if you like.
Card Rankings: The King is the highest-ranking card, followed by the Queen, Jack, and so on down to the Ace.
Type of Game: Nerts is a type of solitaire game.
Audience: This game is suitable for families.
Introduction to Nerts
Nerts, also known as Nertz, is an exciting card game that combines the elements of Solitaire and Speed. Some people call it Pounce, Racing Demon, Peanuts, or Squeal. The goal is to clear all the cards in your “Nerts” pile by building on them starting from an ace. To play, each player needs their own deck. So, if there are four players, you’ll need four decks. Just make sure each deck has different backs so you can tell them apart.
Now let me explain how to set up the game.
When you play Nerts, you start by dealing yourself a pile of 13 cards. This pile is called your Nerts pile. You place 12 cards face-down and the 13th card face-up. Next to your Nerts pile, you deal yourself four cards face-up in separate piles. These are your work piles. Make sure the cards don’t overlap.
All the remaining cards in the deck become the stockpile. Next to the stockpile, there is a pile called the waste pile. You create the waste pile by taking three cards from the stockpile and turning them face-up.
To set up the game, gather all the players around the playing surface. You can form any shape with your cards like a square or a circle. In the middle of the playing field, there is a common area. This area should be easily accessible for everyone. It’s where you’ll build your foundations. Here’s a picture of a typical Nerts set-up.
Welcome to the Game!
Let’s play a game together, where we don’t have to wait for our turns. We can play at the same time and go as fast or as slow as we want. It’s all up to us!
Here’s how it works: we each have a set of cards that we can move around on our own personal layouts. We have some rules to follow, though. We can also add cards to the foundations in the middle of the game area. The main goal is to get rid of all the cards in our Nerts pile by playing them on either our work piles or the foundations. It’s a bit like tidying up!
When you’ve played all the cards in your Nerts pile, you can proudly shout, “NERTS!” and the game will come to an end. Cards that are still in motion can finish their moves and be counted towards our scores.
But here’s the catch: you don’t have to call Nerts when you’ve played all your cards. You can keep playing and try to improve your score. It’s completely up to you!
When it comes to playing cards, there are a few rules to keep in mind. First, you can only move cards using one hand. Your other hand can hold the stock of cards. Also, you can only move one card at a time, unless you are moving a stack of cards from one work pile to another. Lastly, you can only move cards within your layout or from your layout to the common area.
If two players try to play on the same foundation at the same time, the player who hit the pile first gets to keep their card there. If it’s unclear who hit first, both players can keep their cards in that pile.
Remember, you’re never forced to play cards. You can hold onto them and play them when it’s in your best interest.
THE WORK PILES
Hey there! Let me break down the rules for you in simple terms. So, we start with four piles of cards, and each pile has one card face-up. Now, the goal is to build these piles in a kind of special way. We want to put cards in descending order, which means from highest to lowest, and we have to alternate between red and black colors. To make things even more interesting, the cards overlap, so we stack them on top of each other.
For example, if we have a black 10, we can put a red 9 on top of it, and then a black 8, and so on. You get the idea, right? And here’s where it gets exciting – you can move cards from one pile to another! Isn’t that cool? Imagine the possibilities.
But wait, there’s more! When you move a card and it reveals another card underneath, you can actually move that card too. It’s like a chain reaction. You can consolidate, or gather, multiple cards at once and move them to a different pile. So satisfying!
Now, what do you do when you have an empty space in one of the piles? Well, my friend, you have some options. You can fill that space with cards from the Nerts pile – yeah, that’s another pile we haven’t talked about yet. Or you can take cards from another work pile, or even use a card from the discard pile. The choice is yours!
Oh, and I almost forgot! The foundations. They’re like special places in the middle where we can play our cards. And you know what? We get to play the lowest ranking card from the top of any work pile onto these foundations. Pretty neat, huh?
So, now that you know the basics, go ahead and give it a try! Move those cards, stack ’em up, and have a blast. Trust me, once you start playing, you won’t want to stop. Enjoy!
Hey there! Let me tell you about a cool card game called Nerts. It’s super fun and easy to learn!
If the work pile is empty and you have a card in your hand that’s one rank higher and a different color from the base card, you can slide that card under the work pile. This saves time instead of moving cards around. Let me explain with an example: imagine you have a black Queen as the base card on a work pile. Now, if you have an empty space and a red King in your hand, you can just slide the red King underneath the work pile instead of filling the space and moving the black Queen onto it.
THE NERTS PILE
You can play cards from the top of your Nerts pile onto the work piles or empty work piles. You can also play cards from the Nerts pile onto the foundations. And here’s a cool thing: once you play the top card from the Nerts pile, you can flip the next card face-up and get it ready for potential gameplay. It’s like preparing for your next move!
THE FOUNDATIONS
Hey there! Let me tell you all about the game. First, we have the foundation piles in the common area. They’re like the building blocks of the game, starting with an ace. You can add cards to the foundation piles by playing a card that’s one rank higher than the one before it, and it has to be the same suit. Keep building on them until you reach the King. Once that happens, the foundation pile is taken out of the common area and put aside. To start the foundation piles, we put free Aces in the common area. You can play Nerts cards, exposed cards from the work piles, or the top card of the discard pile on the foundation piles. And by the way, any player can add to any foundation pile.
Now let’s talk about the stock and the discard pile.
The stock is where you flip over three cards at a time to create the discard pile. At first, the discard pile is empty. But here’s the thing – you need to keep the discard pile in order, because you can use the top card on the work piles. So remember, don’t mess up the order of the discard pile!
When you don’t have many cards left (less than three), you need to put the rest of your cards on top of the discard pile, flip the deck over, and continue playing with the new set of cards. If all of the players are stuck and there are no more legal moves, everyone needs to create a new set of cards in this way. However, if you’re stuck and waiting for other players to get stuck, you can take the top card from your set of cards and move it to the bottom, then try to play again.
SCORING
If you shout, “Nerts!” during the game, it means the play is over and scoring begins. You get 1 point for each card you play on the foundation piles, but you lose 2 points for each Nerts card you still have in your hand. That’s why it’s important for each player to have a deck with different backs. This way, you can separate the foundation piles by the backs, making it easy to calculate points.
Calling “Nerts” doesn’t guarantee that you’ll have the most points, but it definitely increases your chances. However, when your Nerts pile is empty, you don’t have to declare it. You can just keep playing.
If all players are stuck, even with the new stockpile, the game ends and is scored as usual. The game continues until one player reaches the target score, which is usually 100 points.