Duke of york

Et en français ...

The grand old Duke of York,
He had ten thousand men -
He marched them up to the top of the hill
And he marched them down again

Cards

52 cards counting as follows: A=1, 2 to 10=face value, Jack=11, King=12 Queen=0 (zero); plus two Jokers. A Joker has no independent value but counts the same as the immediately preceding card.

Deal

From a well-shuffled pack deal six cards each, face down and one at a time, and stack the rest face down. The deal alternates between the players.

Object

In phase 1, to play the last card 'going up' from 0 to 31; in phase 2, to play the last card ‘coming down’ to zero. Overall, to win 27 or more cards. (This may take from five to 14 rounds of play.)

Play

Non-dealer leads to each round of play. A round consists of two phases. You each in turn play a card to the table and announce their cumulative value as you go along. Phase one ends when their total reaches 31 or just short of it. If you make exactly 31, you score 3 points; if 30, 2 points; if anything lower, 1 point. Any unused cards are discarded to a waste pile. (Note: The point goes not to the first to make it 31 but to the last, as it can then be followed by a card worth zero.)

In phase 2, you count back downwards, deducting the value of each card played. If you can play without going below zero you must, otherwise you lose. Whoever plays last scores 3 for making 0, or 2 for making 1, otherwise 1 point.

Scoring and winning

Instead of writing points down you can indicate your score by adding to your winnings pile the appropriate number of cards (1, 2 or 3) at the end of each phase. The winner is whoever finishes with the higher number of cards. To break a tie, play another round, using the cards of the wastepile. If you like you can do this anyway, and keep playing further rounds until fewer than 12 cards remain for another deal.

Comment

It is tempting to play all your high cards first so as to hold low ones back for the downhill journey, but a bit of experimentation will show that this may not be the best policy as different results arise from playing cards in a different order. Since each of you can play your own cards in up to 720 different ways, any given deal can give rise to thousands of different games.