FISH
This is a card game for two to five players.
- If two persons are playing, each receives seven cards from a regular deck; if more than two, each receives five cards.
- The rest of the card is placed on the center of the table, face down, to serve as the “stock”.
- Each player in turn calls another by name and asks for cards of a specified rack, as “Madeline, give me your fours.”
- The asker must have at least one card of the specified rank he is asking for.
- The one addressed must give up the card/s being asked of.
- If having none of the specified rank, the one addressed must say “Fish!”
- The asker then draws the top card of the stock.
- Turn passes to the left.
- A player who gets four cards of the same rank (a book), must place it in front, and face up.
- The one who gets the most books wins the game!
Children often make their own rules: An asker who fished from the stock may ask again if the card is similar to the rank named, or if it completes a book.
I DOUBT IT
Play your cards with a large group of six to twelve.
- Deal the cards out as far as they will go, two or three at a time until the last round.
- It doesn’t matter if some players have more than a card than some others.
- Any player begins by placing card/s, face down, in the center of the table saying “Two aces”, or whatever the desired number and rank are.
- Next player on the left must put the cards asked face down in the same pile, calling any number but the next lower rank, as “two kings”.
- Any player, who fails to name the next rank, must take all the cards on the table to add to his.
- Play continues, each calling the next-lower rank in cycles.
- When player’s last batch of cards is down, any other player must say “I doubt it”.
- If several players call “I doubt it,” the nearest on the player’s left is the official doubter.
- Then the last batch of cards in the pile is turned face up; if any card is not of the last rank stated, the player who put them down must take up all the cards on the table.
- But if the cards are correct in number and rank, the doubter must take all cards on the table.
- The winner is the player with no cards left, who may put batch of cards face up because everybody is bound to doubt it!
Trick of the game: Arrange the cards with the ranks in sequence and be honest with your last five or six turns.