!How Thirty-One works

Rules

Thirty-one (also called swimming) is played with a 32-card hand. Each player, on his turn, tries to make a combination in his hand by swapping cards. The object of the game is to hold the combination with the highest point value at the end.

The aim of the game

There are two different ways to make combinations. Either you collect cards of the same suit and add their point values, whereby the following applies:

An ace counts for eleven points, the face cards king, queen and jack each count for ten points, and the number cards 10, 9, 8 and 7 count according to their eyes. The highest possible score here is thirty-one: a hand consisting of an ace and two face cards, or an ace, a face card and a ten of the same suit.

Or you can collect cards of the same rank, i.e. three sevens, three queens, etc. (which are of different suits, of course). This combination always counts for 30 ½ points.

Procedure

The dealer deals three cards face down to each player individually, but two packs of three cards to himself. He looks at the cards in the first pack and decides whether he wants to play with these cards or not.

The next (clockwise) player after the dealer starts the game. He can swap a card from his hand with a card in the middle. If he does not want to swap, he can either not swap a card by saying "Slide", or close the game by passing.

End of game

A game can be ended in two different ways:

If a player passes, all other players may swap (or push) once more and the game ends.

If a player has 31 points in his hand, he puts the cards face up on the table and the game ends immediately - which, of course, can happen immediately after the cards are dealt.

After the end of the round, the losers are determined. The loser is the player or players who have fewer points than the winner.

The swimming

Each player symbolically has three lives. The loser or losers must give up one life each.

If a player has lost all three lives, he may continue to play, but he now floats. If he loses another time, he sinks and is eliminated. Swimming is therefore equivalent to a fourth life.

In this way, an elimination tournament results as the individual players are eliminated one by one and finally only one player, the overall winner, remains. The winner wins the total stakes.