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Saturday, July 23, 2011

Card Games: Hand and Foot


Hand and foot is a card game played with 4 decks of cards and four people (2 on each team). Everyone is dealt 2 sets of 13 cards to begin the game. One will be considered your "Hand" and one will be considered your "Foot." One draw pile will be places at the center of the table and the player in the starting position begins the game by drawing 2 cards from the pile. when the player's turn is up, they discard one card and the next player then draws 2 to begin their turn.

The first goal of the game is to get sets of 3 or more like cards. Once a player has 3 cards, they lie them on the table as "played." The first time a player plays, however, their cards must add up to a given number of points (depending on the round) or their partner (across from them) must have already amounted to that number of points. It is likely that you will have to lay down multiple sets in order to reach the point threshold.

Cheap and fun things to do around Minneapolis/St.Paul

The second goal of the game is to add on to those sets of cards by playing them one or more at a time as the game continues. Once there are 7 like cards, they are considered a "Book" (red is it contains no wild cards and black if it contains 1 or more wild cards). You may only use one wild card for a set of three until you add a 4th card...then you may add a 2nd wild card. No book is to have more than 2 wild cards.

Once a player uses all of the cards in their Hand, they begin playing their Foot. Once a player plays their entire Foot, and they have 2 black Books and 2 red Books, the game ends. At this point, everything unplayed (in someone's Hand or Foot) counts against their team. Everything played counts positively for them. The team that goes out first gets 100 extra points. Here is the scoring and explanation of cards:

Joker: 50 pts (wild)
2: 20 pts (wild)
3 (black): 0 pts (cannot be played)
3 (red): -300 pts (cannot be played)
4-9: 5 pts
10-K: 10 pts
A: 20 pts

Black books: 200 pts
Red books: 300 pts

There are 4 rounds of the game. For each round, you need a certain number of points to lay the first cards for your team:

Round 1: 75 pts
Round 2: 100 pts
Round 3: 125 pts
Round 4: 150 pts

Discarding:
You may draw from the discard pile in place of your normal 2 card draw provided that:
-there is not a 3 as the top card
-your team has already met the required points and played your first set(s)
-you must take 5 cards (unless there are less than 5 in the pile, in which case you take whatever is there)