by Epyo
I played this game with my family a lot when I was very young, and we briefly skimmed the rules and figured it out for ourselves. It was always a riot! More than a decade later I found the game and read the rules, compared it to how I remembered playing it, wrote up a new rulesheet, and we've tried it again 3 times with my new rules and it is still amazing. Here are our complete rules (also covering the re-used bits of the original rules (I bolded most of the new rules):* To set up the game, decide a card limit on the game, around 12-15 cards. Then flip the first card face up. Everyone starts with 5000, just like the normal game.
* Every round, players place bids to make an "attempt" at the current face up card.
* You can bid a positive amount of money to be the "attempter", which means you are offering to pay your money to make the attempt. If you succeed, you keep the money you bid, and if you fail, you lose the money. To bid a positive amount, say "I'll pay $1000 to do it" or something, and then someone else might say "Well I'll pay $2000 to do it" and so on.
* Players can also bid negative amounts! A negative amount means that you are offering to be paid by the bank to "attempt" the card, and you get to keep the money, no matter if you fail or succeed. If you bid a negative amount, say "I'll get paid 5k to do it", then someone else might bid to receive less, saying "Well I'll get paid only 3k to do it", and then someone else might say "I'll do it for free", and then someone else might say "Well I'll pay 10,000 to do it""ok, you win, do it".
* When no more bidding is happening, the final bidder takes their money from the bank if they bid a negative amount, or they put their money in the game board if they bid a positive amount (which meant they bid to pay money (they only get this money back only if they succeed)).
* Then, OTHER players all place bets on whether or not the attempt will succeed. There is no limit on betting. They can put 10,000 on YES, if they want, or 20,000 on NO, whatever, and they must put their yes/no token on top of their bet. (Because players can bet a lot of money, and because the first attempt at a fresh card is so obviously "NO", the chips that come with the game are not enough. We have a large stack of red chips to expand the red chips that come with the game, and a large stack of blue chips that are worth 100,000. If players bet hard enough, you may need even more chips.)
* Once all bets are in, the attempter tries the card. After each roll, the attempter can put dice on the card "locking" the dice onto the icons. Joker icons must all match each other AND NOT match any other dice number on the card.
* If the attempter succeeds, they get the money listed on the card from the bank, and they keep the card (for end game scoring, see later rule). Also, anyone who bet "NO" on the attempt was incorrect, so they must give all the money from their bet to the person who just completed the card (instead of giving their money to the bank). Anyone who bet "YES" gets to double the amount of money they bet.
* If the attempter fails, the dice that were put on the card stay on the card for the next round. Anyone who bet "NO" gets to double the amount of money they bet. Anyone who bet "YES" is wrong, and must throw the money they used to bet away, to the bank.
* For the next round, if the card was failed, it will be easier this time since some dice are locked in. If the card was succeeded, flip up a new card. Either way, start bidding again...
* At the end of the game, once all the cards are used up, players count up their money, and each card they earned during the game adds 10% to their final score! For example, if someone had 100,000 at the end of the game, and had 6 cards, then their final score is 100,000 * (1 + 6*0.10) which is 100,000*1.60 which is 160,000. You are not required to have a card to win.
* "Last Chance" rule: if you run out of money or think you have no hope of winning, call last chance during the bidding phase, to automatically get to make the next attempt. Other players still must place bets. If you succeed, you'll probably be back in the game, if you don't, you automatically are removed from the game. It is not wise to call last chance, but instead, to try to get paid by the bank to attempt the card. If it is a brand new card, you can get paid a lot of money, since other players would rather place extremely large bets on "NO" (since it is a fresh card) rather than take the measly payment you're looking for.
The ideas behind the rules are these: bidding a lot of chips on "NO" on a fresh card is really fun, and should be encouraged, so there should be no bet limit. But then, it is hard to convince people to try to be the "attempter" when they'd rather be a better, betting to double their entire chip-set.
Allowing people to bid negative amounts gives people good reason to be the "attempter"--it is a zero-risk way to get guaranteed money during a fresh card, and there is also a small chance you'll succeed and bankrupt everyone else. Allowing people to bid negative amounts also helps players who are far behind: If the best players are working with values in the ten thousands, and my biggest chip is only 1000, I'll never catch up to them just making bets. But I can offer to be paid 5000, and they're not going to offer to be paid 4000 or something, because it's too little money.
The other cool part is that each card adds 10% to your score at the end of the game. Because of this, as a card gets close to completion, players can get into much more interesting bidding wars. If players are playing very similar games, the player who has more cards will likely win.