A player may touch a Joker, and even pick it up halfway, but the announcement of rank and suit must be completed before the Joker leaves the pile it is on. The reason for this rule is to give other players a fair chance to realise that they can play the next card top of the joker, denying the player of the joker the chance to get un-stuck by doing the same. When playing Jokers on the work piles no announcement needs to be made. A Joker on top of a work pile or on the Nerts or waste pile can be placed on any work pile without a thought. If a regular card is moved onto a Joker, however, the Joker's rank and color are fixed until the cards above it are removed.
Jokers score like any other cards.
Some people, rather than totalling the score over a series of hands, play each hand as a separate event in which the player with the highest score wins. Some players reverse the order of each set of three cards, so that the card which was on top of the stock becomes the card which is uppermost on the waste pile. Some play that the stock cards are turned up onto the waste pile one at a time rather than three at a time. Commercial Versions of Nerts Greg Stanforth has designed a special deck of cards for playing Nerts. Details of these are available from his Nertz web site .