Albastini

Players and equipment

Play Albastini with two, three, four or six people, using a deck stripped to thirty-six cards: pull every 2, 8, 9, 10 and joker out of a standard pack. Four or six players can split into pairs, partners sitting across from each other; six can split into two threes instead, with each player sitting between two opponents. At two or three, everyone plays alone.

Rank runs the same in every suit, highest to lowest, and the value is what you're really collecting:

Ace (Dume)

11

highest card in the suit

Seven (Jike)

10

second highest, above the King

King (Mzungu)

4

third highest

Jack

3

fourth highest

Queen

2

fifth highest

Six, five, four, three

0

no value

Learn that Seven before anything else: in Kiswahili the Ace is Dume (male) and the Seven is Jike (female), and in every suit the Seven outranks everything but its own Ace. Add it up and the deck holds exactly 120 points, all of it in the Aces, Sevens, Kings, Jacks and Queens, so every deal's piles always total 120 between them.

The deal

The first dealer is whoever's convenient — often the host. After that, the winner of a deal deals the next one; in a team game the winning side agrees between themselves who deals, and ideally they take turns. A tied deal is dealt again by whoever dealt it.

Dealing and play both go anticlockwise. The dealer shuffles, gives five cards to each player, and leaves the rest of the deck face down on the table as the stock.

Before the trump suit is set, each of the dealer's opponents gets one chance to bid for it — in Kiswahili this bidding is called Otea. Starting with the player to the dealer's right, each opponent in turn may place one card face up on the table, guessing at a suit; every bid must be in a different suit, and the dealer may not bid, nor may the dealer's partner(s) in a team game. Once everyone has had their turn, the dealer turns the top card of the stock face up — that suit is trumps. Anyone whose bid card matched the new trump suit must swap it for the trump card itself, even if their bid was the better card: bid the 5 and the 3 turns up trumps, and you must trade your 5 for that 3. That's why the sense is to bid low, worthless cards (3, 4, 5 or 6) rather than risk a good one. Everyone else takes their bid card back. The dealer then slides the face-up trump card (the bid card, if one was swapped in) half under the stock, so it stays visible to the table for the rest of the deal.

In a team game, once trumps are shown and before the first card is led, partners may look at each other's hands for a few seconds — once per deal, then the cards go back.

Play

The player to the dealer's right leads the first trick — called a round in Albastini, where winning one is "eating" it (kula) — by playing any card face up. Each other player in turn plays one card. There is no requirement to follow suit at all: play any card from your hand, any round. The round goes to the highest trump played, or, if nobody played a trump, to the highest card of the suit that was led. Whoever wins it gathers the round's cards and sets them face down on their own pile, or their team's shared pile in a team game.

After each round, starting with whoever just won it, every player draws one card from the stock to get back up to five, and the winner leads the next round. The trump card tucked under the stock is the very last card drawn, and it falls to the player sitting to the right of whoever wins that round. Once the stock is gone, play carries on without drawing until every card has been played.

Watch for Ndoa — "getting married" — when a Jike (Seven) is eaten by the Dume (Ace) of its own suit. Do it on purpose — hold your Ace back to catch the matching Seven — and the table will call it the sharpest move there is.

Scoring

Once all the cards are played, each player — or each team, in a team game — turns their won cards face up and counts the total value. However many piles there are, their totals always add up to 120. Whoever (or whichever side) has the highest total wins the deal and scores a victory point: normally one, but two if any losing player or side fell under a minimum called mrithi. The mrithi line depends on how many are on a side: 10 points for a solo player, 20 for a pair, 30 for a three-handed side. Fall short of your mrithi and you've been shut out hard enough to hand the winner a double. A tie for the top total scores nobody anything.

A worked deal

North and South are partnered against East and West. The hand plays out, the stock runs dry, and both sides turn over their won cards:

North-South

72

cards eaten this deal

East-West

48

cards eaten this deal

72 and 48 add up to 120, as they always should. East-West's 48 clears their mrithi line of 20 for a pair, so North-South's win is worth the ordinary single point rather than the double:

Victory point to North-South

1

East-West cleared mrithi (20)

Had East-West's total come in under 20, the same deal would have scored North-South 2 points instead of 1 — the mrithi rule is there precisely to punish a side that gets eaten alive.

A round on the SquareScores sheet is one deal. SquareScores deals no cards and never sees one — the hand is played at the table, and all it asks for is the result. Once a deal is settled, every player on the winning side enters its 1 or 2 in their own column, so partners stay level; the host can put it right for anyone. There's nothing to type for the losing side, and no card value ever goes on the sheet: that's all counted at the table and then forgotten.

Ending

A deal ends the moment the last card is played, and that's also the only thing that ends — Albastini itself doesn't come with a finish line of its own. Victory points build up from deal to deal with nothing on the sheet to race to; more points is simply better. Keep dealing for as long as the table wants to play, and when you're done, End match banks the running total as it stands — any player at the table can tap it, not only whoever is ahead.

Bid cards you can afford to lose

A bid is a gamble on a suit, paid for with whatever card you put down — and if your guess is right, you don't get to keep it. Bid low, worthless cards (a 6, 5, 4 or 3) rather than anything with points on it, since a correct bid trades your card for the trump indicator regardless of which is better. A card with value only costs you here: if its suit turns up, you lose it for whatever was turned.

Hold your Aces for their matching Sevens

Ndoa — marrying your Ace to the matching Seven — is the single biggest card-point swing available in one move: 21 points landing in your own pile from two cards. If you're holding an Ace and haven't seen its Seven yet, there's a real case for sitting on it rather than playing it early, above all the trump Ace, which nothing can beat and which can wait for the trump Seven to show.

Count what's already fallen

With no requirement to follow suit, every round is really a question of whether to spend a valuable card or a worthless one, and that calculus changes as the stock runs down. Keep a rough tally of which Aces, Sevens and Kings have already been eaten — yours, your partner's and your opponents'. Late in the hand, when nobody is drawing any more, knowing exactly what's left in play is most of the skill.

Play your Sevens into rounds you can win

A Seven only really earns its 10 points if it survives to be gathered into somebody's own pile. Playing it into a trick you're confident of taking — because you're leading trump, say, or because the suit led is one you can beat — is safer than throwing it out blind and hoping.

Remember the mrithi line

The difference between winning a deal by a point and winning it by two is entirely about whether the other side cleared their minimum, so it's worth tracking the running total during the hand, not just at the very end. A side that can see it's heading for a shutout should fight harder for any point-card they still can, even a losing fight for a King is better than finishing under mrithi.

Five players

Five can play as individuals with one adjustment: the face-up trump card under the stock is never drawn, so the hand plays out over seven rounds using only thirty-five of the thirty-six cards, and nobody's total includes the value of that one card sitting out of play.

Setting a line

Albastini as written has no winning score of its own — it's simply played deal after deal for as long as the table likes. A table that wants a clear finish can agree a victory-point target before anyone sits down and stop when a side reaches it; the sheet just keeps the running tally either way. Nothing in the rules changes; it's purely a house agreement about when to stop.

Threes instead of pairs

At six players, two teams of three is as standard as three pairs: each player sits between two opponents rather than opposite a single partner, play is otherwise the same, and the mrithi line rises to 30 for the losing side.

How many cards do you deal in Albastini?

Five to each player, from a thirty-six card deck with the 2s, 8s, 9s, 10s and jokers removed. The rest of the deck sits face down as the stock, and you draw back up to five after every round until the stock runs out.

Why is the Seven higher than the King in Albastini?

Because the ranking isn't the usual order. In each suit the cards run Ace, Seven, King, Jack, Queen, Six, Five, Four, Three — so the Seven, called Jike, sits second only to the Ace, called Dume, and beats every King at the table. It's the game's signature quirk and worth learning before anything else.

Can you play Albastini with five players?

Yes, with one change: the face-up trump indicator card under the stock is left undrawn, so the hand runs seven rounds on thirty-five cards instead of the usual stock-draining version, and that one card's value never counts toward anyone's total.

Do you have to follow suit in Albastini?

No. You may play any card from your hand on any round, trump or not. A round is won by the highest trump played, or, if none was played, by the highest card of whichever suit was led.

What does "mrithi" mean in Albastini?

It's the minimum card value a losing side needs to have eaten to hold the winner to a single victory point — 10 for a solo player, 20 for a pair, 30 for a three-handed side. Fall short of it and the winning side scores two victory points instead of one.

How do you win a deal in Albastini?

By eating more card value in tricks than the other side. All the totals add up to 120, and whoever has the highest, player or side, takes the deal and scores a victory point, doubled if any loser never reached their mrithi minimum. A tie scores nobody.