POPULAR GAMES FORM AROUND THE WORLD PT. 2 – OVERVIEW
Welcome again to my ramblings and welcome back to part two of my mini-series of Popular Games from Around the World. In the first one, we talked about Kaiser from Canada and Whist from Great Britain. If you haven’t read that yet, you should go take a look.
Once again, I’d like to reiterate that the world has so many games from so many different places and while I would love to write about every single, it isn’t possible (won’t stop me from trying though). So, I haven’t talked about a game or you would just like to share a game with me to try, please feel free to reach out to me and tell me all about it.
MEXICO
The first game we’re talking about in this article is from Mexico. It’s called Conquian and it has a similar play style to rummy. The object is simple, be the first person to collect ten cards.
For Conquian you can use a standard deck of 52 cards with the 8s and 9s removed, but to get the full experience of the game I’d recommend going and buying a traditional Conquian deck. In the traditional Conquian deck, there are four sets called the Oros (golds), Copas (cups), Bastos (clubs) and Espadas (swords). Each set has cards numbered 1-12 minus 8 and nine, leaving you with a 40-card deck.
To play Conquian you need 2 to 4 players, and each player is hoping to play cards in sets or sequences of three or more cards. Once a player has played ten cards they have won.
You start off the game dealing each player nine cards, and the game proceeds by players deciding which cards they would like to keep or pass to their right. Players will draw cards and see if they have the ability to match cards with this drawn car (either by sequencing or set) if so, both are placed in front of the player and they discard a card from their hand, but if not its placed in the discard pile.
The discard pile is fair game to all players and can be used to help themselves or sabotage other players. Play continues like this until someone wins. All in all, a fairly simple game that’s loads of fun
EGYPT
In Egypt, we have the game Tarneeb. It is a traditional trick-taking game made for four players. It’s popular all over the Middle Eastern Countries. The word Tarneeb even means trump in Arabic. There are traditionally two types of Tarneeb, the difference being in the bidding system.
In the Tarneeb popular in Egypt, you not only bet on how many tricks your team will win but also on the proposed trump suit. In Tarneeb players split into teams of two and is played with a standard deck of 52 cards. It has a standard ranking system of Ace high 2 low as well.
Tarneeb is played by each player being dealt 13 cards, the bidding begins. It starts with the player right of the dealer who will state a number between 7 and 13 and a trump. The trump ranking goes no trumps as the highest followed by spades, hearts, diamonds, and clubs is the lowest. This is how many tricks they bet their team can win and what trump will be used in the game. Players go around clockwise to try and outbid the other teams wither increasing the number of tricks won or of which trump will be used. Once all players pass on increasing the bet, the game begins.
To play Tarneeb the player who won the bet starts. Players must follow suit if able and if not able then can either play a trump or discard a card of another suit. Each trick is won by the highest trump or in the case that there is no trump, the highest car of the original suit.
You win points based on the bid, if the bidding team wins less than 13 but is successful then they score points for how many tricks they won. If they are not successful, the other team will score points to the number they won, and they lose points equal to their bid.
If you win all 13 tricks it’s called kaboot and the team earns 16 points, and if your team had bid on winning 13 and won all 13 tricks you instead score 26 points.
CONCLUSION
To close out this article I would like to remind you that one of the greatest joys in life is playing games with your friends and families. If you find yourself in a slump or need a pick me up, I always recommend playing something fun and entertaining and maybe the games I talked about today can be your new go to.