Pocha

Description

Objective

How the game goes on

Start of the game and each of the hands

Guess the number of tricks

play by yourself

play by yourself

Description

This is a Spanish card game.

The Spanish pack has 40 or 48 cards distributed in four suits: oros (golden coins), copas (glasses), espadas (swords) and bastos (sticks); the picture cards are sota (jack,10), caballo (horse,11), and rey (king,12). Most games are played with the 40 cards pack (pictures and cards from ace to seven), but some of them need also eights and nines.

At least three players are needed, but we recommend four or five.

Our version is valid for three, four, five, six or eight players

The game is long because many hands must be played. There are lots of variants, depending on the number of hands played and some changing rules. The rules here explained correspond with the options used in this version.

Objective

A definite number of hands are played during the game. The winner is the player who gets the highest score at the end of the game. That score is obtained according to the next explained rules.

Players start with one only card in the first hand; the number of cards that every player receives is increased by one in every hand, until all the cards of the pack are dealt. All the cards are dealt as many times as players take part in the game. Usually, the return is made by decreasing the number of cards, and finally one only card is played again.

The length of the game can be very variable due to the great amount of variants that this game takes. Ludoteka.com offer three variants: one of them like explained; a second variant that finishes without doing the return, just when all the cards have been dealt; and the third version, playing only the hands with all the cards

When 3 or 6 players take part in the game the twoes are removed from the deck, so that it must be possible to deal all the cards.

How the game goes on

Start of the game and each of the hands

Randomly players decide who is the dealer; the next player on the right will start the game.

At the start of every hand the player at the left of the dealer must cut the pack; cards are dealt one by one, and finally another card is put face up to show which are the trumps.

When all the cards must be done, the dealer must show his own last card, because it will indicate the trumps.

In every hand the dealer changes to the next player, from left to right.

Guess the number of tricks

In every hand the number of tricks to play is the same number of cards dealt to every player. In every trick all the players throw one card; always one of the players wins the trick and carries thrown cards.

Every time that cards are dealt, before playing them, all players, starting by the leader, have to forecast the number of tricks to get.

There is one limitation, in the sum of tricks that all the players forecast for themselves, that corcerns to the player who makes the last forecast: that sum cannot equal the number of tricks that are going to be played; as a result of this, it´s not possible for all the players to hit their own number of tricks. This rule is not applied when one only card is dealt.

This forecast is the key factor of the game; the prime objective is to hit, and the secondary objective is to obtain an high number of tricks.

Playing the cards

After doing the forecast, the leader throws any of the cards; the rest of the players will throw everyone one card, in the same order as doing the forecast (counterclockwise), according to the following rules:

If possible, one card of the same suit that opened the trick (opening suit) must be played, trying also to beat the highest card thrown until that moment.
If it is not possible to beat the highest card thrown of the opening suit, or someone has thrown a trump, any card of the opening suit must be thrown.
When not having one card of the opening suit, the player must try to win the trick by throwing a trump; so, if there is no trump on the table or it´s possible to beat the higher trump, one trump must be thrown; if it´s not possible to beat the highest trump or the player has no trump, any other card can be played.
This is the hierarchy between the cards of every suit, from highest to lowest: Ace, Three, Rey(King,12), Caballo(Knight,11), Sota(10), Seven, Six, Five, Four, Two

Pick up the tricks

The trick is obtained by the player who has thrown the highest trump and, if there is no trumps on the table, by the player who has thrown the highest card of the opening suit.

In the rest of the tricks of the hand the start is made always by the player who obtains the previous trick.

Scoring the tricks

After playing all the tricks of the hand the scores are updated according to the number of tricks obtained by each player and the forecast made before playing the cards:

Each of the players that hit exactly their own number of tricks gets 10 points.
Those players get also 5 points for each trick obtained in the hand.
The players that don´t hit their own number of tricks get 5 minus points for each trick of difference (both too much and too little) between the forecast and the obtained.

End of the game

The hands are repeated successively, accumulating the score during all the game. The winner is the player with the highest score after the end of the last hand. If there is a draw, new one card deals are played until the draw is broken.

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