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alobearOur regular online games partners introduced us to yet another interesting game last night.
Tichu is a four-player trick-taking game, played in pairs, with a normal deck of cards, plus four special cards. At the start of each round, you give cards from your hand to the each of the other players and receive some in return. You can place a bet to say you will be the first one out, which can give a lot of points to your team, or risk you losing them. Then, whoever is leading the trick gets to play one of many combinations of cards (single, pair, sets of adjacent pairs, three-of-a-kind, full house, straight of five of more cards, etc) and each other player has to either play a similar combo of a higher rank or pass.
So, not everyone will play the same number of cards in each round - hence the bet about going out first. The special cards allow you to trump or pass play to your partner or increase the value of a combination. And only certain cards collected in a winning trick actually score points.
It was a really interesting game to get the hang of. As there could easily be negative points scored in a round, as well as positive points, the scoring went up and down quite wildly over the course of the game. We were meant to play until one team achieved 1000 points - but we played at least six rounds, and ended up on 265 and 235 points, which perhaps suggests we weren't very good! But we all enjoyed it and I'd definitely be happy to play again.
Tichu is a four-player trick-taking game, played in pairs, with a normal deck of cards, plus four special cards. At the start of each round, you give cards from your hand to the each of the other players and receive some in return. You can place a bet to say you will be the first one out, which can give a lot of points to your team, or risk you losing them. Then, whoever is leading the trick gets to play one of many combinations of cards (single, pair, sets of adjacent pairs, three-of-a-kind, full house, straight of five of more cards, etc) and each other player has to either play a similar combo of a higher rank or pass.
So, not everyone will play the same number of cards in each round - hence the bet about going out first. The special cards allow you to trump or pass play to your partner or increase the value of a combination. And only certain cards collected in a winning trick actually score points.
It was a really interesting game to get the hang of. As there could easily be negative points scored in a round, as well as positive points, the scoring went up and down quite wildly over the course of the game. We were meant to play until one team achieved 1000 points - but we played at least six rounds, and ended up on 265 and 235 points, which perhaps suggests we weren't very good! But we all enjoyed it and I'd definitely be happy to play again.
