Agram

Players and equipment

Two to five players, each for themselves, with thirty-five cards cut down from a standard 52-card pack: take out the King, Queen, Jack and Two of every suit, and the Ace of Spades as well. The cards of each suit rank from high to low: Ace, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3 — nine cards a suit, so the pack holds thirty-six of that run before the one Ace of Spades is set aside, which is why the highest card in spades is the 10.

The deal

Deal passes to whoever won the hand before; for the first hand, any player chosen by agreement deals. The dealer shuffles and the player on their right cuts. Each player is dealt six cards, handed out in two batches of three — three cards round the table, then three more — and the game is played counter-clockwise, to the dealer's right rather than the left.

Play

The player to the dealer's right leads the first trick: any card, played face up in the middle. Going round counter-clockwise, every other player must follow with a card of the same suit if they hold one; a player with none of that suit may play any card they choose. The highest card of the suit led wins the trick, whatever else is on the table — there is no separate trump suit here.

Whoever won a trick leads the next one, playing any card face up on top of the last, and the table follows suit again if it can. Six tricks make a hand, since each player holds six cards, and the last of the six — the sixth trick — is the only one that decides anything. Win it, and you have won the hand.

Scoring

There are no points in Agram. There is nothing to add up and nothing to carry from one hand to the next — only the sixth and final trick, and whoever takes it.

The first five tricks

Nothing

Won by anyone

The sixth trick

Wins the hand

The last one played

SquareScores deals no cards and sees none of the play — the table plays the hand entirely by hand, and only the result goes into the app. On the match table a hand of Agram is one row: win the last trick and your name gets the tap. A table playing several hands in a sitting records each hand as its own row, and the tally of taps is the running score. Agram has one winner a hand and no other places to rank, so there is nothing else to enter.

A worked hand

Four players — Aïcha, Boubacar, Chaibou and Djibo — each holding six cards after the cut.

Trick 1

Chaibou wins

Boubacar leads a 9, Chaibou follows with the 10

Trick 2

Djibo wins

Chaibou leads an 8, the table follows suit, Djibo holds the Ace

Trick 3

Djibo wins

Djibo leads a 7; Aïcha has none of that suit and plays off-suit

Trick 4

Boubacar wins

Djibo leads a 6, Boubacar holds the Ace of that suit

Trick 5

Chaibou wins

Boubacar leads a 5, Chaibou's 10 beats it

Trick 6

Chaibou wins

Chaibou leads a 4, their last card, and nobody can beat it

Chaibou took three tricks to the others' three between them, but none of that matters next to the one fact the table cares about: Chaibou won the sixth and final trick, so Chaibou wins the hand. On the match table that is one tap, on Chaibou's name.

Ending

A hand ends the moment its sixth trick is played, and whoever wins that trick has won — there is no going further and no carrying a score into the next hand. A table that wants to settle a sitting on one result plays a single hand; most tables play several, tapping the winner's name on the match table each time and letting the taps add up. End match is any member's, for a hand stopped short of its sixth trick — a deal abandoned, a table breaking up mid-hand — and the next hand opens by itself once this one is tapped.

Hold back your winners

A trick in the middle of a hand is worth nothing on its own; only the sixth is. If you are not confident of winning the lead back, spend your weak cards on the early tricks and keep your Aces and tens for the end — a card that wins trick two but leaves you with nothing left for trick six has won you nothing at all.

Watch who leads last

Whoever wins a trick leads the next, so winning trick five gives you the lead into trick six, and everybody else must follow your suit if they can. Keep a last card that is the highest still out in its suit, and win trick five so that you can lead it.

Count what has fallen

With only six tricks and nine ranks a suit, it is worth tracking which high cards — Aces and tens especially — have already been played. By the fourth or fifth trick a careful player usually knows whether their last card is safe, because most of a suit's top cards have already shown themselves.

Being void is not always bad

Holding none of the suit led lets you play anything, and whatever you play cannot win, because there is no trump. Throw your weakest card and keep your Aces and tens for tricks you can lead or follow, above all the sixth.

Lead where you hold the top card

When you win a trick and must lead the next, lead a suit whose highest card still out is yours. There are no trumps, so a lead nobody can follow cannot be beaten, because a player without the suit can only throw a card away. A suit where a higher card is still out hands the lead to whoever holds it.

Sink-Sink

Played in Niger alongside Agram itself, under a different name for a shorter hand: five cards each, dealt as three and then two, from the same thirty-five-card pack. Everything else — the ranking, the play, the counter-clockwise order — is identical, and the fifth and final trick decides the hand instead of the sixth.

Fapfap

The Cameroon version of the game, arrived recently from Niger. The deal and the ranking match Sink-Sink's five cards, but in Cameroon each player's played cards go face up in a pile in front of them rather than into one shared pile in the centre, and the game is usually played for a stake: four times the stake for winning the last two tricks with a 3, twice the stake for winning only the last trick with a 3, and a single stake for winning the last trick with anything higher. SquareScores keeps no stake and records only the win.

Agram in Mali

A related game under the same name, played in the north of Mali, with its own thirty-one-card pack (the 6, 5, 4, 3 and 2 of every suit removed, along with the Ace of Spades) and a very unusual ranking: Ace, King, 10, Queen, 9, 8, Jack, 7 from high to low. Five cards are dealt, in batches of two and then three, and the winner of the fifth and final trick both wins the hand and deals the next.

Playing at a bigger table

Agram's deal of six cards each caps a table at five players from the thirty-five-card pack — a sixth player would need more cards than the pack holds. The source does not say what a bigger table does. Sink-Sink's five-card deal from the same pack reaches seven players (7 × 5 = 35), if the table agrees to play that instead.

How many cards do you deal in Agram?

Six to each player, handed out in two batches of three, from a thirty-five-card pack with the Kings, Queens, Jacks, Twos and the Ace of Spades removed. The Mali and Sink-Sink versions deal five instead.

How do you win a hand of Agram?

By winning the sixth and final trick. The first five tricks can go to anyone and count for nothing on their own — only the last one decides.

Is there a trump suit in Agram?

No. Every trick is won by the highest card of the suit that was led, with no suit outranking the others. Because the Ace of Spades is removed from the pack, the highest card you will ever see in spades is the 10.

Can you play Agram with two players?

Yes. Nothing changes at two. Each player is dealt six cards, twelve of the thirty-five, and a player with none of the suit led still plays any card they choose.

What happens if nobody can follow suit?

Then the player who led wins the trick: theirs is the only card of the suit led, and a card of another suit never wins, however high. Every other player plays any card they choose, and none of those cards can beat the lead. It is a good trick to save a strong off-suit card for, since nothing forces you to spend it on one you could not win anyway.

Is Agram the same game as Spar?

Related, not the same. Spar (also called Sipa) is played in Ghana and some other West African countries and is probably descended from a European game brought over at the time of the slave trade. Agram, Sink-Sink, Fapfap and Agram in Mali are regional versions that share the last-trick idea, each with its own card count and pack.