Welcome to Nine Five Two!

Hey there! I’m excited to introduce you to Nine Five Two, a super fun card game that you can play with two of your friends. The goal of the game is simple: score more points than your opponents to come out as the winner!

In Nine Five Two, you usually play to either 10 or 20 points. You get to decide the target score before you start the game. So, get together with your friends and choose how high you want to aim!

Getting Started

Now, let me explain how to set up the game. There are two dealing phases in Nine Five Two. The first phase includes the very first deal, and the second phase covers all the deals that come after it.

During the first phase, we randomly choose a dealer. The dealer shuffles the deck and asks the player on their right to cut it. Then, the dealer deals out 16 cards to each player. The remaining four cards are placed facedown in the center of the play area. This little pile is called the “kitty.” The dealer will choose the trump suit, take the kitty into their hand, and finally, discard any four cards by placing them facedown to the side.

The next phase starts with me, the player to the left of the last dealer, and then goes around in a clockwise direction for future deals. I shuffle the cards and then let the player to my right cut the deck. I then deal each player a hand of 16 cards.

Now it’s time to exchange!

After everyone has received their hands, we can start exchanging cards. If you were up in the last round (which I’ll explain in a bit), you can give a player who was down one card for each trick you were up. In return, the down player has to give you the highest card of the same suit they have in their hand. If there are multiple up players, the one who was up the most gets to exchange first, and then the others can exchange as well.

Once the exchange is completed, the dealer will declare the trump suit and collect the kitty, just like we discussed earlier. Next, they can discard any four cards from their hand, the ones they don’t want to keep. If the dealer was in a losing position, they must reveal any cards that have a higher rank than the ones given to the players who exchanged with them. So let’s say the dealer received a 3 of clubs and gave a 6 of clubs, but then ended up with a 10 and an ace of clubs from the kitty. In this situation, they have to privately show these two cards to the player they exchanged with.

The Order of Cards

The order of card ranks is traditional. It starts with Ace, which is the highest, followed by King, Queen, Jack, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, and finally, 2, which is the lowest.

Let’s Play!

So, here’s how the game starts. The person sitting to the left of the dealer goes first. They can play any card they want to start off the game. Then, the other players have to play a card of the same suit if they have one. But if they don’t have a card of the same suit, they can play any card they like. The winner of each round is the person who plays the highest trump card, if there is one. If there are no trump cards, then the winner is the person who plays the highest card of the suit that was led. The winner gets to collect the cards from that round and gets to start the next round.

Each player has a certain number of rounds they have to win in order to do well in the game. The dealer needs to win 9 rounds, the player to their left needs to win 5 rounds, and the player to the dealer’s right needs to win 2 rounds. If a player is winning more rounds than they need to, they are “up” by however many extra rounds they have won. On the other hand, if a player has not won as many rounds as they need to, they are “down” by however many rounds they are short of their target.

SCORING

Once I finish a round, it’s time to tally up the scores. If I manage to hit the exact number of tricks required, I don’t score anything. But if I exceed that number, I earn a point for each extra trick. On the other hand, if I fall short of the required number, I lose a point for each trick I’m missing.

THE END OF THE GAME

The game continues until one of the players reaches the targeted score. The first player to achieve this score is declared the winner.

The game continues until one of the players reaches the targeted score. The first player to achieve this score is declared the winner.