Bartok

Players and equipment

Three to eight players and a standard 52-card pack — a joker or two may be added; a joker is wild. Known almost as often as Bartog, and sometimes as Warthog; the three names cover the same deck and the same spreading chaos. There are no suits that beat each other and no fixed special cards. Bartok starts as a plain matching game, and the players rewrite it as the sitting goes on.

The deal

Five cards each, dealt from a shuffled pack. The rest goes face down in the middle as the stock, and the dealer turns its top card face up beside it to start the pile — that first card has no special effect, whatever a later rule might say about its rank. The winner of each round deals the next one, or names any other player to deal instead.

Play

Whoever is first to put an eligible card on the turned-up one plays first — it is a race, not a turn — and play goes clockwise from them unless a rule says otherwise. On your turn you either play one card from your hand onto the pile, matching its rank or its suit, or draw a single card from the stock — never both, and never neither. A joker, where the table is using them, matches anything; say out loud which card it stands for as you play it.

The moment your hand goes down to one card — however it gets there — say "Bartok". Forget, and any player who notices in time may call it on you.

Two more rules are there from the start: nobody may ask a question during play, and nobody may say anything provably false. The one exception is a timeout, which anyone may call to have a new rule clarified; the player who made the rule answers, and their word is final. Everything else in Bartok is a rule somebody at the table invented, and a rule invented this sitting binds the whole table until a later rule repeals or overrides it. Whenever the table agrees that somebody has broken a rule in force, that player draws one card from the stock as a penalty. A penalty draw is not a turn: play carries on from wherever it was. Call it promptly; a rule broken five minutes ago and forgotten about is not worth raising now.

Scoring

There is nothing to count inside a round and no cards to add up. A round ends the moment somebody plays their last card, and that is the entire result — a round is a round, however oddly it ended.

A round won

Tap their name

Somebody empties their hand first

A rule broken

Draw one card

Caught before it is forgotten

A round abandoned

Tap End match

Nobody goes out

On SquareScores that is the match table: every round is one row, and a tap on the winner's name files it.

A worked sitting

Four players — Alice, Ben, Cara and Dev — play three rounds of Bartok after dinner.

Round 1

Dev

Dev says "Bartok" as he goes down to one card, then plays it out on his next turn

Round 2

Alice

Alice goes out on a card that, by Dev's rule from round 1, skips the next two players — it does nothing, because she has won before it takes effect

Round 3

Cara

Cara and Ben are both down to one card each when Cara plays a joker, calling it the card she needs

Three rows on the match table, a tap on each winner, and the standing reads Dev 1, Alice 1, Cara 1, Ben 0. Round 1's winner is also the one whose invented rule changed round 2, which the table remembers without the app needing to: SquareScores only ever records who went out, never which rule was in force when they did it.

Ending

The first player to empty their hand wins the round, and the card that finishes it is deemed to take effect only after they have won — unless an invented rule says otherwise. The winner deals the next round, or names someone else to, and settles any dispute over the rule they invented if a timeout is called on it. Shuffle up and deal again for as many rounds as the table wants. A sitting that stops partway through a round, with nobody out, ends unmarked under any member's End match, the same as any other game the pack decides rather than the players.

Learn the rule on the table before you play into it

Every rule Bartok is playing under came from a previous winner, and a table three or four rounds in may be running six or seven of them at once. Listen for what each round's winner announces. Asking a question during play costs a penalty card, so if a new rule is unclear, call a timeout and ask its maker then; a rule everyone else already understood is not one you can ask about.

Hold back the card nobody has a rule on yet

Once a few rounds have gone by, most ranks carry some effect — a skip, a forced draw, a reversal. A rank with nothing attached to it is usually the safest card in your hand, because playing it rarely triggers a rule against you. Save it for the moment you most need a plain, uneventful turn, and spend your awkward cards early while a mistake still costs little.

Win cheaply, not showily

The round goes to whoever empties their hand first, not to whoever plays the cleverest card, so there is no credit for a hard-fought last card over an easy one. If a boring, ordinary play finishes your hand, take it — the rule you get to invent afterwards is worth more than how you got there.

Make your rule count

A new rule has to apply to everyone and cannot be aimed at one named player, but within that limit you decide what the whole table plays under for the next round, and for anything that happens after it. A rule that is confusing to referee, or that collides oddly with an older one, costs you more penalty draws from the rest of the table than a plain one ever will — invent something you yourself can judge without having to think twice.

Use the rule you dislike, rather than fight it

A rule somebody else invented against the general run of the table — a forced draw, a skip — is just as available to you as to anyone when your turn to deal it comes round. Complaining about it wins nothing; playing it well does.

Skip and reverse

A rank is agreed to skip the next player, or the next few, or to turn the direction of play around. Most tables reach for one of these early, because it is the simplest rule there is to referee.

Draw X, and stacking it

A rank forces the next player to draw a set number of cards instead of playing. Tables that like it harder make it cumulative: the next player may answer with another draw card of their own instead of drawing, and the penalty grows by the same amount each time, so a draw of two becomes four, then six, until somebody cannot answer and has to take the lot.

Swap hands

A rank makes the player who plays it swap hands with another player — the one on their left, on their right or opposite, or one of their choosing, as the rule says. It can hand you somebody else's one-card hand on the very turn before they were about to go out, which is exactly the point of it.

Say something, or say nothing true

A rank obliges whoever plays it to say a particular word as they play it — "Beep", "Quack", anything. A harder one puts whoever plays a certain card "under the influence": from then on they may only say things that are false, and are penalised for saying anything provably true, until another player plays that card. Tables that enjoy the rule-making more than the cards themselves tend to collect several of these at once.

Tournament hands

Across several rounds, the dealer gives the previous round's winner one fewer card each time, so the game gets faster for whoever keeps winning, until somebody is dealt none at all and takes the whole tournament. A table settling in for a long sitting may agree to play this way from the start, rather than waiting for somebody to invent it mid-sitting.

How many cards do you deal in Bartok?

Five each, whatever the number at the table, with the rest face down as the stock. The deal stays at five unless an invented rule changes it — a tournament rule, for instance, deals each winner one card fewer in later rounds.

What happens when somebody breaks a rule in Bartok?

They draw one card from the stock as a penalty, and that draw does not count as their turn — play carries on from wherever it was. It only counts if somebody notices and says so within a reasonable time; a rule broken and forgotten stays forgotten.

Do you have to invent a new rule if you win a round of Bartok?

Yes — the winner of a round always adds one new rule for the round that follows, and it stays in force until a later rule changes or cancels it. Two limits are part of the rules: a new rule must not obviously favour or punish any player, and it may not directly govern how later rules are made. Within those limits the winner's word is final, however much the table complains.

Is Bartok the same game as Crazy Eights?

No. Crazy Eights is a fixed game — eights are always wild, and the table scores the losing hands by their card values toward a target. Bartok starts from the same plain matching game but keeps none of its rules fixed: every round's winner changes what the special cards do, so no two sittings of Bartok end up playing the same game twice.

What do you do about a new player who does not know the current rules?

Most tables tell them only the very general basics — match the pile, draw if you cannot — and let them find out what the invented rules do by being caught by them. It costs them one awkward turn and is most of the fun of bringing somebody in partway through a long sitting.

How do you win a round of Bartok?

By being the first to play every card out of your hand. Whatever rules the table has invented by that point in the sitting, going out first is still the one thing that ends a round and hands you the next rule to invent.