i thought it might be a wonderfull thing if we got a small bridge club running. we could use yahoo bridge or some other free applet run application. it might be fun, getting to know each other, chatting a bit in the meanwhile etc.
oh for chirsts sake, i cant belive this
what sort of snotty wasps are you people ?!
I don’t play bridge (or any other dental games…) but I do play spades…
-Imp
dental games ? whats that ?
a bad pun
-Imp
aww didnt know you were that puny.
Card games are a bourgeois luxury that will be outlawed after the revolution.
Viva Las Vegas!
alright, the fact por doesnt read might pass. but the fact you folks cant play cards cant never pass. its an outrage, i cant belive the bunch of hillbillies that populate this so called philosophy forum.
Ah, a “you people” once again. It has been a while since I have seen one of those. There is nothing quite like sterotyping as a mental shortcut.
I jotted this down just yesterday when I read it:
“Civilization advances by extending the number of operations we can perform without thinking about them.” -Alfred North Whitehead
So maybe it is inevitable.
Not to disrespect anybody, but once you have discovered the game of Napoleon, there is no other four-person card game. All others pale in comparison.
When Yahoo puts Napoleon up next to scrabble and spades and such, come on back and we’ll rip shit up. Until that time, speak not of bridge or hearts or spades - sickly, bland games all.
Napoleon has the two-team element and the bidding necessity of bridge and the psychological tension of poker. When you don’t know who your partner is, it’s tougher to get the points and more satisfying when you do.
RULES OF NAPOLEON - a ridiculous and arbitrarily complex game that nevertheless owns all others.
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There is one joker in the deck.
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All cards 10 and higher (aces high) are worth one point. There are 20 points in the deck.
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FOUR players are required. All cards except five are dealt. The five may be selected in any order by the dealer as long as the players’ cards are dealt in order. The five stay in the middle for now and the stack is called the kitty.
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The game is played in tricks (like hearts, bridge, spades, etc). The trump suit is determined by the results of the bidding. Players bid, starting from the player to the dealer’s left, to determine who will be Napoleon. Minimum starting bid is 12 points with the trump suit you select. For example, I say “Fourteen hearts,” meaning I propose to win this hand with at least 14 of the 20 points if I am Napoleon and hearts is the trump suit. Bidding goes in bridge order (clubs-diamonds-hearts-spades) - a bid of 14 spades beats my bid of 14 hearts but someone who can only win if clubs are trump must bid 15 or pass.
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When Napoleon has been selected (by the highest bid) he names his Angel. This is Napoleon’s teammate and partner. He selects one card that he thinks will help him the most, a card he does not have in his hand. Only after Napoleon has named his Angel can he then pick up the kitty (the five leftover cards) and plunder it. He may pick and choose from the kitty, selecting cards for his own hand, and he must then put down five cards which are discarded for the rest of the game. Napoleon is allowed to “bury” points in the kitty if he chooses; he must inform the table how many points he has buried. There is thus the (mostly remote but it happens) possibility that Napoleon will not have an Angel; if he finds his angel card in the kitty, the whole table is ranged against him.
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Once he has put the reformulated kitty back down, Napoleon leads the first trick. Whoever wins each trick leads the next trick. All players must follow suit (if hearts is led and you have a heart, you are required to play it).
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All numbered cards and most face cards behave standardly - highest on-suit card takes the trick. However:
-There are three power cards. The ace of spades, the jack of trump, and the brother jack (if trump is spades, the brother jack is the jack of clubs - the jack of the same color as trump). In this order, these cards take any trick regardless of what else is played - ace of spades is the best, brother jack the lowest power card, ace beats both jacks and jack of trump beats brother jack.
-A deuce (2) will take any trick as long as all four cards played are on-suit and no power cards are played.
-The joker, when led, requires that every other player play trump, and the joker always wins the trick, as long as no power cards are played. Joker beats a deuce even if everyone plays trump.
-When the three of spades is played, in any context, the joker becomes useless and must be played the very next trick - thrown away. If this means the joker is led, whatever card the next player throws determines the suit of the trick. -
Scoring: If at the end of the game Napoleon has taken the amount he bade or higher, he wins. He receives the amount of the bid times ten (for a bid of 15, 150) and the Angel, if any, receives half that sum. Defense players lose half of Napoleon’s winning sum. If defense wins and Napoleon loses, defense players win half of what Napoleon would have won had he won, Napoleon loses the same amount (half what he would have won), and the Angel loses half of that (one fourth of what Napoleon would have won).
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As with bridge, verbal strategizing between partners IS FORBIDDEN.
Some results of these rules. At the start of the game, verbal strategizing between partners is not only forbidden but actually impossible: you can “feed” points to your partner if you so desire, but if the angel does so carefully, the defense will not pick up on it and will thus not be able to coordinate their campaign.
When Napoleon gets kitty-licked (i.e. finds his angel card in the kitty rather than it being in the hand of another player who would have been his Angel thereby), it is still possible for him to win. It requires God’s own poker face and the ability not to play that card until absolutely necessary, but even with a high bid Napoleon can win if his hand is good enough.
Speak not of other games when I have this to play.
xanderman, if you also read “snotty wasps” next to the “you people” the stereotyping becomes so obvious one might even notice the sarcasm. or maybe not
as ed would say, you are fined two iq points for not reading between the lines.
weeee i got my two back. i can stop dieing now.
Sarcasm is one of the most difficult inflections to convey with text alone.
Hell I thought he was being ironic, not sarcastic, what with the only people who play Bridge being snotty wasps.
there is something to be said for snotty non whites dont you think ?