Evening star., 1938-01-16

Wv booker Whist Club in
New York, nevertheless the
members occasionally like to play
quick game OF Persian or partnership
pinochle rummy. according to special
rules devised ut the club.
This interesting game is played with
q regular deck plus four extra jokers.
Each player is dealt eight cards. AS
IN AL rummy games, the object is to
acquire spreads consisting of three or
more Of . kind or three or more of a
suit in sequence. The ace counts high
only, and may be spread only with
other aces or as the top of an ace
king-queen sequence. The jokers are
not wild, but are merely special cards
which may only be spread with each
other. In other words, unless you can
get three tokers together and spread
them, they do you no good.
One card is faced up, and the play
ers In turn draw and discard. You
may draw either the top card from the
stack, or as many successive cards as
you desire from those faced up, except
that when player draws one or more
faced-up cards, he must Immediately
spread the last Of the faced-up cards
that he has 10 drawn. For example,
If there are six cards faced up, the
bottom one being the eight Of dia-
monds, . player may pick up all six
cards provided that he can use the
eight Of diamonds for either q Sc
uuence or three e-of.a-kind
WHEN . player goes out, he re-
ceives q bonus Of rs points. All
players are then credited with what
they have spread and charged with
what they have left in their hands.
Jokers count 20, aces is, picture cards
10, other cards the number Of spots.
-Four Of kind. played all at once,
count double. The game Is 500 points,
and the winning side collects the dn-
ference in score plus 100 points. While
most games are fairly close, We have
occasionally seen an instance where
the losing side will be minus.
During the course of the play, any
one may play on his own. his partners
or any opponents spreads. The part
nership angle makes the game really
fascinating, and II any Of our readers
wants to play 1t, we shall be glad to
answer questions.
There is really tremendous amount
OF skill to the game. For instance, II
you hold a joker. normally you do not
want to discard it, since there are
two opponents and one partner that
may be helped. However, if you have
reason to believe that your partner
holds two other jokers, you naturally
want to get it to him. and If you
simply discard 1t Immediately, the
player in back Of you may intercept.
Suppose there are two exposed cards
the three Of hearts and the two OF
spades. You now discard q Joker.
The next player holds two deuces,
promptly picksSup the Joker and the
deuce, spreads his three deuces and
discards some other card. Accord
ingly. when trying to shuttle . speci-
ned hlgh card across to your partner,
be sure that the next player does not
have control of one Of the cards al
ready faced up.
The game is similar to bridge in one
respect-partners can get into the
most beautiful arguments. For in
stance. a particularly choice one al
ways occurs when at the conclusion
Of hand 1t is disclosed that partner
A has been grimly holding on to two
jokers, while partner B has been
guarding the other two with equal
desperation.
Persian rummy can also be played
with two. three or four players, every
man playing for himself ard against
the others. There is naturally less
skill In this type Of game than in the