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Introducing... Piquet

10 May 2011

nohome

Jerome Bradpiece returns to his little box of tricks to introduce another rare, but fun game.

Piquet

Piquet-Boo

Poker's great and all, but when you've had enough of flops ‘n’ ting, a change is as good as a rest. I've previously recommended Chinese Poker and Big Two, but it's not only the Orient that has unexplored, ludic depths.

A game from the Pan Book of Card Games (1960) by Hubert Phillips (see my blog for an earlier reference) that has caught my eye and I’ve been playing a lot recently with Sarah is Piquet. French in origin, it was the game of choice when Aristocratic fortunes were won and lost at the tables. Heads-up for estates, anyone?

Piquet is for two players and played with a strip deck (7s and up). Each game consists of a partie of six deals. The deal alternates. You're trying to score as many points as possible.

Scoring

After 6 deals, if both players are over 100 points, A (the winner) wins his score minus B's (the loser) score plus an extra 100 points.

If one or both players gets less than 100, A wins by the sum of the scores, plus 100 points.

For example:

A scores 148; B 106, A wins by 42+100 = 142.
A scores 99; B 76, A wins by 175+100 = 275.

If you lose and don't get to 100 points, you have been rubiconed.

Play

You get 12 cards each, leaving 8 in the middle (the talon), face down. The non-dealer (the elder hand) now must swap between 1 to 5 cards from his hand and the middle; then the dealer (the younger hand) swaps 0 to 7 (up to what's left).

Now you compare hands on:

1. Who's got the most of a suit?

- i.e. I have 5 diamonds, you have 6 spades; score: 6-0 to you (only the winner can score points).
- It’s called a point, as in, “I have a point of 6.”

2. Who's got the longest straight flush?

- You need at least 3 to qualify.
- If they are the same length, it goes to points (A = 11, K-J-Q = 10, other cards face value); if they are the same length and size, no-one scores.
- 3 scores: 3, 4 4, 5 15, 6 16, 7 17 8 18.
- These are known as tierce, quart, quint, sixieme, septieme and huiteme respectively and is generally called a sequence.

3. Who's got the best quads?

- Quads score 14.
- Needs to be T-T-T-T or above to qualify.
- So, if you have A-A-A-A, Q-Q-Q-Q and 9-9-9-9, and I have K-K-K-K, the score is 28-0 to you.

4. Who's got the best trips?

- Trips score 3.
- You need T-T-T or above to qualify.
- For trips, quads and sequences, the winner can score his secondary trips, etc as well.

The non-dealer then leads a card for the first trick. There are no trump suits and the second player must follow suit if he can. The highest card of the suit led wins the trick; the winner of a trick leads to the next one. You get one point for every trick you win, an extra point for winning the last trick, and 10 extra points for winning more than 6 tricks.

Bingo Bango Bonus

• Carte Blanche

Get dealt a hand with no K, Q or J .
= 10 points.

• Repique

Score 30 in hand when your opponent scores 0.
Doesn't count if they are Carte Blanche or you tied on the Point or Sequence.
= 60 points.

• Pique Elder

Hand scoring 30 in hand and play, where Younger hand scores nothing in hand.
= 30 points (given no ties in point or sequence natch).

• Capot

Win all 12 tricks.
= 40 points instead of the bonus 10 for winning more than half.

Don't worry too much about the terminology and the bonuses – for one, the game is easier than it sounds, so give it a whirl, and, for two, we've played maybe 40 games and are yet to see a French word.

Por Ejemplo

Here's an example hand I just dealt out to make things easier to digest (I promise it's not rigged; just an action game):

Elder hand: 7-8-9-J-Ks 7-9-T-J-Ah Ad Ac
Younger hand: 7-8-9-T-J-Qd 8-Q-Kh 8-Jc Qs

Elder trades in 7-8-9-Js, gets T-As and 7-Kc, so his hand is now:

T-K-As 7-9-T-J-Ah Ad 7-K-Ac

Younger trades in 8-Jc and 8h, gets T-Qc and Kd, so her hand is now:

7-8-9-T-J-Q-Kd Q-Kh T-Qc Qs

Elder hand now declares: “Point of 5.”
Younger responds: “No good, 7.”
= 7 points to Younger.

“Run of 3.”
“7!”
= 17 to Younger.

“Quad aces.”
“Obv good.”
= 14 to Elder.

“No sets.”
“Nor me.”

Heading to tricks, the score is 24-14 to Younger.