From: hudu@well.sf.ca.us (Scott Marley)
Subject: Re: A card game ... like Hearts squared
Organization: Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link
Date: Wed, 14 Oct 1992 10:15:09 GMT


I created a version of Le Barbu myself in the late 70s, and published it in
the April/May 1989 issue of Games Magazine under the name of Guillotine.  I
think this scoring system gives more opportunity for skillful play than any
other I've seen.

For a full description you'll have to dig up a copy of the magazine; I'll
give a brief summary, though.

Guillotine is for four players, played with a 32-card deck stripped of twos
through sixes.  Each player gets eight cards; dealer chooses one of six
subgames and then leads to first trick (or in the case of Dominoes, plays
the first card which determines the foundations).  In the five tricktaking
games, the cards rank A-10-K-Q-J-9-8-7.  In Dominoes the cards rank in the
usual American order, though if that's hard to wrestle with there's no harm
done if you play with the 10 above the king there, too.  (The schizophrenic
ranking seems to be part of the original form of the game.  Anyway, I think
it unbalances the game and makes the heart king and the queens too powerful
if the usual ranking is used.  The original form has a nicer balance between
the chances of being stuck winning with a queen and the chances of being
able to pitch it under a higher card.)

The five tricktaking games are:

Royalty--King of Hearts scores 20 points (plus points are bad, as in
     Hearts), Queen of Spades scores 10 points
Queens--Each queen scores 10 points, King of Hearts scores *minus* 10
     points
Spades--Each spade scores 5 points, King of Hearts scores minus 10 points
Parlement--Each trick scores minus five points, King of Hearts scores minus
     10 points
Guillotine--Everything is bad!  King of Hearts scores 10 points, each
     spade scores 5 points, each queen scores 10 points, first and last
     trick each score 5 points

The sixth game is Dominoes, essentially the same as Fantan.  The first card
played (by the dealer) determines the foundations.  There is a bonus when
you play an ace: you may immediately play any other playable cards on the
same turn.  (*May*, not must; it's your option.)  However, if the
foundations are aces, the bonus for playing an ace doesn't apply.  First out
scores minus 30 points, second out scores minus 10 points.

Guillotine isn't a zero-sum game, but the scores do add up to exactly 400
points, so if you subtract 100 points from each score when the game is over,
you'll have a zero-sum result, should you be playing for stakes.


Lately I've come to think that this scoring system can be improved upon.
Guillotine seems excessively important to me--it's more interesting if the
games aren't of precisely equal weight, true, but there are more points at
stake in Guillotine than in Royalty, Spades, and Queens combined, which
seems too much to me.  So I've revised the scoring system.  But I should
mention that I know of a group of card players in New York City who became
addicted to Guillotine after it appeared in Games Magazine (they've been
playing it a couple times a month for about three years now; I'm very
proud!), and when I told them I had revised the scoring system they were
downright hostile to the very idea.  So the original system seems to work
all right in spite of my qualms.  Even so, I like the revised system better,
so here it is:

Royalty--King of Hearts and Queen of Spades each 25 points
Queens--Each queen 10 points; King of Hearts minus 10 points (negating
     exactly one queen, that is)
Spades--Each spade 5 points; King of Hearts minus 5 points (negating
     exactly one spade, that is)
Parlement--Each trick minus 5 points, King of Hearts minus 5 points
Guillotine--Each spade, each queen, and the King of Hearts 5 points
     (the Queen of Spades counts 5 + 5 = 10 points)
Barricade--(The same as Dominoes/Fantan, but renamed to fit the French
     Revolutionary theme) First out minus 30 points, second out minus
     10 points

Yikes!  I forgot to mention that the new Guillotine is played with a 36-card
deck, with the twos through fives removed.  (Another thing I decided I
didn't like about the original game was the way the suits would sometimes
break 2-2-2-2 all around, which is a bit dull; can't happen in the revised
version, with nine cards in a suit.  I experimented with full-deck versions,
but they seemed less exciting, so I stayed with the shortened deck.)

In the revised version, each subgame is worth a different total number of
points: Royalty 50, Queens 30, Spades 40, Parlement minus 50, Guillotine 70,
Barricade minus 40.  I like this arrangement a lot: it's interesting to have
the games worth different amounts, but the differences are less extreme than
in my published version, and now taking a dive in a round of Guillotine
isn't the unrecoverable catastrophe it used to be.  And the points again add
up to exactly 400, which is convenient if playing for stakes.

If anybody gets around to trying either version of Guillotine, I'd be very
pleased to hear comments, for good or for bad.

Scott Marley
hudu@well.sf.ca.us