As shown in the chart above, each card can contribute a certain point total to a players hand. The object of the game is for a player to not be the player or players with the lowest card point total of cards in his hand. The last hand shows an example Blitz hand, the highest possible total in a player's hand. In the third example, since all cards are of the same suit, the total value of the hand would be all three added together. In the second example, the nine and five added together make the highest total, so the total of that hand would be 14. Illustration, with one card of each suit, the highest card in the hand would determine the value of the hand, in this case the Jack (10). At the start of the game, each player is also provided with three counters or tokens which he should place in front of himself on the table.įour sample hands in the game Thirty-One. He then turns over the top card of the stock laying it beside the stock pile to start the discard pile. The dealer then places the remainder of the deck in a face-down pile in the center of the table to form the stock pile. After the cut, the dealer then distributes three cards to each player, one by one, face down in a clockwise direction. Once determined, the dealer shuffles the cards and offers the deck to the player at his right to cut. Selection of seating positions and first dealer can be done using a variety of methods, with cutting for high cards from a shuffle deck often the method used. The following chart shows the point values for each card in the deck: Although in this game, there is no real overall relative ranking among the cards in this deck, each card is considered to have a potential point value. The game is designed to be played by two to nine players and uses one standard 52 card deck. It also goes by a large number of other names such as Scat (which should not be confused with the German trick taking game Skat), Blitz, Clinker, Trenta Et Un, Cadillac and Cad. Thirty One is a fast moving game and, due to the simplicity of the rules, can be learned rather quickly by most players.

Card games scat rules