Smear
k larson
I cannot find anywhere an explanation of or rules for playing Smear.
The people in northern Minnesota play it. If anyone has a lead on
information about this game or another name for it, I'd sure appreciate
hearing from you. Thanks!
John McLeod
It is a version of Pitch / Setback. There are a lot of different
varieties of it. I have collected some on my card games site at
http://www.netlink.co.uk/users/pagat/allfours/schmier.html
--
John McLeod For information on card games visit
jo...@pagat.demon.co.uk http://www.netlink.co.uk/users/pagat/
William R Sherman
In article <...>, k larson <kla...@informns.k12.mn.us> writes:
> I cannot find anywhere an explanation of or rules for playing Smear.
I think one of the encompasing playing-card web sites has it
listed as "Schmear" or something to that effect. (Probably
John Hay's.)
> The people in northern Minnesota play it.
You know, it seems like a lot of card games come from this region.
One might think that all these people do is stay inside an play
cards six months out of the year or something. But, that's good
for me, since I have family up in the Twin Cities area (on my
wife's side), and get to learn a few new games.
> If anyone has a lead on information about this game or another
> name for it, I'd sure appreciate hearing from you. Thanks!
It's pretty simple rules (and play). Use a 32-card deck (7's
and up), 4 players (2 teams with teammates sitting opposite),
deal 6 cards to each of player (leaving 8 unused cards). There's
one round of bidding, starting to the left of the dealer. Bids
are from 1 to 4, with each player having the option to pass or
increase the bid. Bid winner picks the trump suit and leads.
Play is mostly standard trick-taking style, with one major
exception - you can play trump anytime (ie. even without being
out of the suit led). The goal is play is to get as many
"game points" of four possible sub-goals as possible. Those being:
*play* the highest trump
*play* the lowest trump
*take* the jack of trump
get the most card points
Note, that you only have to play the highest and lowest trump
cards to get credit for those goals, and win the trick with
the jack of trump. The last goal is to collect as many "card
points" during play. Cards are worth A-4 points, K-3, Q-2, J-1
and 10's are worth 10 points, with a total of 80 for the deck.
The name of the game comes from the strategy of "smearing"
(or schmearing) point cards to your teammates tricks (hopefully
10's). If both teams end up with the same number of points,
no "game point" is awarded for that goal.
Note that while there are four goals that can result in a
game point being awarded, two of them are not guarenteed (points
and jack), so there may be only 2 or 3 game points awarded
during some hands.
Each team is given the number of game points they take during
a hand, unless the winning bid is not made (they get set),
in which case their bid is deducted from their score, and
the other team still gets a point for each of the goals they
accomplish.
Winning team is the one with the most game points after 20 hands.
Some strategy: I think the basic rule of thumb for this game
is to bid agresively. A two bid is generally pretty easy to
make, and chances are good your team can get 3 or 4 points.
Also, common practice is for first lead to be the Ace of trump,
often using this as the way trump is declared -- of course,
each hand dictates whether this is a good idea (not to mention
you might not have the ace of trump).
Bill
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/* Bill Sherman (wshe...@ncsa.uiuc.edu) */
/* National Center for Supercomputing Applications */
/* University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign */
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/* "You want to do mankind a real service? Tell funnier jokes." */
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