FAMILY FUN NIGHT

What do you do when your family gets together? We play a lot of card games. Among our favorites are Liverpool Rummy (or some call it Progressive Rummy), Hate Your Neighbor, Pitch, Back Alley; to name of few. Tonight mom and dad taught us a new card game. It's called Pollock Poker. (Please don't hate me or think I'm prejudice. I didn't name the card game that; I'm just playing it and having fun doing so. It is not my intentions to offend anyone.) There isn't a lot of skill or strategy involved. It's mostly chance or luck of the draw. I'm going to attempt to teach you how to play it too.

 A couple of things to know before you begin:
     A King is 0 points
     A Joker is minus 2 points
     A Queen is 10 points
     A Jack is 10 points
     An Ace is 1 point
     All remaining cards are their face value
     Two cards turned up that are the same and are "on top of each other in the (in the same column) cancel each other out resulting in 0 points.
     4 cards alike in each of the 4 corners of your 6 cards results in 10 additional points to each of the other players added to their score.
     The object is to be the player with the lowest score.

Start by using 2 decks of card (even if you only have 4 people playing). You might want to use 3 or 4 decks of cards if you have a lot of people playing. Deal each player 6 cards. Don't pick them up. Leave them face down for now. Arrange the cards 3 cards across and 2 cards down on the table in front of each player.

 Leave the remainder of the cards in the middle of the table for the "draw pile". Turn over 1 card from the draw pile and put it next to the draw pile to create a "discard pile". Now each person turn over 2 of their 6 cards. It can be any 2 cards. The first person to go can take the top card off the discard pile or he can draw a card from the draw pile. At this point he needs to decide if he's going to trade the card drawn for one of his 6 cards. The object is get as low of a score as possible. He can trade it for a card showing, not taking any chances or he can trade it for a card still face down and hope for the best. Or he can do nothing at all with the card drawn and just throw it away to the discard pile and it is now the next person's turn to the left. This continues around the table to the left until the first person turns over all 6 of his cards. The first person to turn over all 6 of his cards goes "out".
At this point, each of the other players can now turn up any remaining cards that are still face down and are given the chance to draw one last card from the draw pile. He may trade it out for any one of his 6 cards, trying to get the lowest score possible. No one is allowed to pick up any discarded cards from the discard pile once the first player goes out. All players will now count their score and record it.
The next person to the left (of the original dealer) will take his turn dealing the cards. When you deal the cards on subsequent rounds, you will start by dealing out the "draw pile" cards first. The cards that were used in the previous round will be gather and shuffled and placed on the bottom of the "draw pile". You will play a total of 10 rounds, adding to each players score after each round. The player with the lowest score after 10 rounds will win the game.  

Here are my cards with a score of 1 after the first round.  The King is 0 points, the 2 is 2 points, the two 2's on top of each other are 0 points (they cancel each other out), the Ace is 1 point and the joker is minus 2 points.  Pretty good score!

Here are my cards after round 2.  My score was 9.  The 6's cancelled each other out as well as the 9's.  So  8 plus 1 point for the Ace is 9 points.

Round 3 was a good round.  Everyone else got an extra 10 points because of the 4 queens in each corner and my score was only 3.

 Round 4 my score wasn't as good.  12 points.

 Round 5 was a score of 19, a really lousy score.

 Round 5 was a score of 23.  We're not doing too hot at all.

 Round 6 was a score of 6, ok we're doing a little better.

 Round 7 was a score of 19, ouch, not as good again.

Don't ask me what happened to the other 3 hands.  I guess I got too involved in the card game and forgot to take pictures.  

 Easy right? Strategy; very little, Skill; none, making memories with your family; priceless. I hope you'll try it with your family and/or friends. Let me know how I did writing directions to play a card game and let me know if you have any questions. I take no responsibility for family feuds as a result of this card game combined with very serious card game players. Yes, we have a few of those in our family. Some of our family members take their card playing very seriously. Not me, I play for fun and I play "nice".  Now, deal the cards, I'm ready to play again.  And it's almost assured I won't win.  I rarely do!