Shanghai'd Again

Last night (Friday) my sister's family (we'll call her Gena, not to be secretive, but simply because that's her name) and my mom came to visit for the evening. We ordered out pizza for everyone, shot the breeze for a while, and then proceeded to play OUR adopted family cardgame known as "Shanghai". I'm not sure where the game got its name. All I know is that one of my uncles introduced our family to it. For all I know he could have sneezed at the same time he told my mom the name and she just misunderstood him - I dunno. It's a great cardgame which is good for practically any number of people (5 in our case). It's a form of rummy where the goal is to score with a combination of sets and runs each hand. Sets have to be at least 3 of a kind (i.e. 3 aces, 3 nines, etc) and runs have to be at least 4 consecutive cards of the same suit (i.e., 5,6,7,8 of spades, etc.). At one point I 'googled' it and found multiple variations, but the one we play consists of 7 different hands with the objective for each hand being:

Hand Objective
1 2 sets
2 1 set, 1 run
3 2 runs
4 3 sets
5 2 sets, 1 run
6 1 run, 2 sets
7 3 runs

As in all forms of rummy a player may also score by "rummying" on another player's set or run.

Five people require 2 decks of cards. I suggest you use 2 decks with different color backings or you'll be spending overtime in separating out the 2 decks when you're done LOL. The dealer cuts the deck, attempting to cut it at the exact point where he'll have zero cards left in his "half" of the deck when he is done dealing and turning a discard. If he makes a perfect cut (56 cards out of 108, including jokers, for 5 players) he earns a bonus of 50 points for that hand. Each player is dealt 11 cards and then a discard is turned over to start the discard pile and the remaining cards are placed face down in a "deck". Jokers are used as wildcards.

One of the differences from regular rummy is that if the active player (the person whose turn it is) doesn't want the card on top of the discard pile, then the rest of the players (in clockwise order) have the chance to "buy" the card. Each player has 3 such buys at their disposal for each of the 7 hands. If one of the other players does buy the card, he takes the card off the discard pile as well as 1 card off the top of the facedown deck. And then the same active player, who hasn't taken a card yet, has the choice again of taking the next discard (since it has just been "uncovered" by the buyer) or the one on top of the facedown deck. If he decides he still doesn't want to draw from the discard pile, the other players again have the chance to 'buy' the card, again going in order clockwise starting with the player next to the active player. And that's how the game goes.

Standard scoring rules apply at the end (2-9=5 pts, facecards = 10 pts, aces = 15 (5 if its used as a "one"), and wildcards are worth 25 pts). A person cannot lay down any cards for scoring until he has the complete objective in his hand. In other words, on the 3-set hand, you cannot lay down to score until you have laid down all 3 sets in the same turn. After you 'lay down' the requirements for the hand, you can then start rummying on players with any of your extra cards. When a person "goes out", meaning he has no cards in his hand after his last discard, everyone counts their points. Anyone who was not able to lay down has to count the cards in his hand and subtract the total from his grand total. The winner is the person with the highest total of points at the end of the 7th hand.

It takes about 2 to 2.5 hours or so to play an entire game and can get pretty crazy in the last few hands when you're going for both sets and runs. It may sound complicated here, but it really isn't as long as you remember which hand you're on so that you're going for the right combination of sets and runs LOL. Those are the basic rules. Whew - if you have any questions about how to play, leave a comment and I'll try to clear it up - maybe...

Over the years we've kept scorepads at both our houses to keep track of who has won each game. Hence the reason for the title of this post. My brother-in-law, Gary the Steamroller, has Shanghai'd us three weeks in a row. Its getting to the point that we're gonna put a bounty on him for anyone who can beat him (gamewise), maybe even physically LOLOL. Actually we had a great time Friday night and already look forward to seeing them again at Easter next week at their place. My question to you'all is if I make a deck of marked cards to play with, does it count as a super-secret-double-probation-type-of-sin if I use them to beat the Steamroller on Easter Sunday????

Later...and be careful out there.