Gongor Whist

a solitaire trick-taking game for the Decktet

[sample]

Overview: Gongor Whist is a solitaire trick-taking game in which you try to win tricks against a dummy hand. The trump is randomly determined by flipping over an Ace, but with every trick you have the option of randomly determining a new trump. Each pass through the deck is two hands; each hand uses about half the cards.

The goal is maintain a positive score.

The fore hand

Deal: Separate the Aces from the basic deck. Shuffle them together in their own pile and flip up the top card. This determines the initial trump suit.

Shuffle the rest of the deck together. Deal seven cards each into two face-down piles. One of these is your hand of cards. The other is the dummy.

Bid: Looking at your hand, decide how many tricks you think you will be able to take. This is your bid for the hand. If you don't take exactly that many tricks, you will lose points. You must bid at least one.

Playing the trick: Flip up the top card from the dummy hand. You must play a card that shares a suit with the dummy's card, if you have one; otherwise, play any card from your hand.

After playing your card, but before resolving the trick, you have the option of twiddling trump. Flip over the next card in the Ace stack. That suit is now trump, instead of the suit of the previous Ace. The new trump determines whether or not you win this trick and remains in effect until you twiddle the trump on a later trick. If you twiddle the trump when there are no cards left in the Ace stack, then there is no trump for the remainder of the hand; with no trump, the highest card that shares a suit with the dummy's lead wins.

You win the trick if you played a trump and the dummy didn't, if you played a higher trump than the dummy, or if no trump was played but you followed suit with a higher card. Otherwise, you lose the trick.

Regardless of who wins the trick, lead the next trick by flipping over the top card from the dummy hand. Continue until you have resolved seven tricks and depleted both hands.

Scoring: If you won exactly as many tricks as you bid, then add your bid to your score. If you won either more or fewer tricks, subtract the number of tricks you did win from your score.

Set aside the tricks from this hand and, without reshuffling, deal the aft hand.

The aft hand

Leave the Ace pile as it is. Using the remainder of the deck, deal again: Seven cards to yourself and seven to the dummy. (There will be two cards leftover. Set them aside without looking at them.)

Bidding and game play for the aft hand are the same as for the fore. The only different is that you lose two extra points if you miss your bid.

After completing the aft hand, reshuffle both the Ace pile and the main deck.

Public information

Part of the game is remembering what cards have been played. If you want to make the game easier, though, let yourself look back through tricks from the fore hand when bidding the aft hand. Also, you can let yourself look back through discarded Aces before decided whether or not to twiddle the trump. For a hardball game, don't do any of that.

Variants

The under hand: After the aft hand, deal the two remaining cards as a one card hand. Bid and play the trick as usual. Your bid is just a prediction as to whether your one card will take the trick or not. If you make your bid, score one point; if not, lose 3 points.

The extended deck

I have only tested this game with the basic deck, but here are some provisional rules for the extended deck cards.

The Excuse: If the dummy leads the Excuse, then you may play any card but lose the trick regardless. If you have the Excuse in your hand, you may play it in any trick even if you have a card that would follow suit; you lose the trick if you play the Excuse.

Pawns: are below Crowns but above 9s in rank order. If your card and the dummy's card are both Pawns, yours is considered to be lower rank. With Pawns in play, each hand can be eight cards.

Credits

Original design: P.D. Magnus

Gongor Whist is inspired by Richard Hutnik's Oneonta Whist.

Links

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[download] The Decktet is presently available either as a digital document or as a printed deck. The Decktet Book is available in several formats.

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