The Fool

The Fool: a game for those who think strategically rather than relying on luck

The Fool is a traditional Russian card game, created in the 18th century and most popular since the 20th century.

The object of the game is to discard all your cards.

Rules of the game:

At the beginning of the game, each player is dealt 6 cards. The rest of the deck is a stock pile. One card is defined as a trump card and is placed face up under the stock pile. Depending on whether there are 36 or 52 cards in the deck, the cards are ranked from deuce or six to ace.

The order of play is clockwise. The player with the lowest value trump, 2 or 6, starts the attack. He lays one to four cards of the same value. The next player defends by trying to beat these cards with higher value cards or trumps. If a player succeeds in defending an attack, it is his turn to attack. If not, he takes the whole pile of cards from the table. And then it is the next player’s turn to attack.

Occasionally, players will have less than six cards - they take the necessary number from the stock pile. The last person left with cards is the loser and is declared the fool.

There are variations on this game:

• Throw in Fool. When two players are competing, the adjacent players throw in cards of the same value, up to a maximum of six cards per round.
• Transferable Fool. As well as defending, a player can transfer cards of the same value to the next player and then it is the next player’s turn to defend.