"65"

Someone on Flickr asked me what card game we were playing at Cousins Day. I've talked about "65" before, but I thought I might explain in detail how this rummy-like game is played. The game might have been invented by friends of Peach & Bob on one of their RV trips, or perhaps it's been played by other people too. It would be interesting to see if anybody else has heard of it, perhaps called by a different name.

First there is the pot of money. Each person puts in 50 cents to play and an additional 65 cents, out of which the winnings for each hand will be paid. I'm really not sure why it's divided up like that, but let's not quibble. It is what it is.

The game is played with two decks of cards. One game is 13 hands. In each hand the wild card is either the joker or the number of that round. For example:

The first hand everyone is dealt 3 cards, so the 3 is wild. In the second hand, everyone is dealt 4 cards, so the 4 is wild, and so on. This is one reason why it's so easy to accidentally throw away the wild card, because it changes with each hand.

To win you have to have runs of 3 or more or multiples of 3 or more in your hand. Aces are low, so a run would not be queen, king, ace, but it would be ace, two, three, etc. of the same suit. Or three or more 3s or 4s or queens or whatever.

You draw from the deck, or take the top card from the discard pile, and then you discard. And don't forget if you discard the wild card, you get the boob (a trip to an adult toy store is necessary to find the proper boob!). We also decided last time that if someone discards the wild card and the next person doesn't notice, that person becomes the new boob.

The tricky part is going out. If you have a hand filled with runs and/or multiples, you can go out, but only if the next card you draw fits into your hand. E.g., if you are on round 6, and you have three 5s and a run of 8, 9, & 10 of hearts then you can't go out until you get either another 5, a 7 or a jack of hearts, or a wild card. The person going out puts down a hand with one more card than everyone else, and no discards.

This is obviously the 4s round. 4s are wild. I need either two kings or 2 wild cards or one of each in order to go out. (Oh yeah--and the drink also helps!) 4s is the most difficult round because it's so difficult to get 5 of one card, or a run of 5 and that is all that's going to win the round for you.

This winning hand is a run, 6-7-8-9, three 9s, 3 jacks, and 3 queens (with the King acting as a wild card).

Once someone goes out, the remaining players each draw a card and discard one so that they get their score down to the lowest possible number. Cards are scored on their face value, with the face cards each counting for 10 and a joker, if you can't use it (e.g., if you have no doubles that it can be added to to make a third), 50 points.

At the end of one round, the winner gets 5 cents for every player in the game. On cousins day that is 20 cents a round, though if we had more people the pot would be larger.

At the end of the game, when all 13 rounds have been played, the player with the lowest score takes all the rest of the money. Peach is always our banker and doles out the money for winning hands and the pot at the end of the game.

As you can see huge fortunes can be won or lost playing this game :).