To put it simply, travelling involves alot of waiting in airports or train stations, and you end up having to be really creative with how you make the time pass. So for me, after exhaustively listening to my ipod and using up my two hour laptop battery, I'm happy to pull out packs of cards and play some portuguese rummy. It's like normal rummy but like a gazillion times better. This is how it goes:
You need 2 packs of cards, including all jokers and a piece of paper for scoring.
Each player gets 14 cards.
Put the remaining playing cards in a pile and turn the first card over.
If the person starting doesn't want to pick up that card, they give that card plus one from the pile to the next player. (You can have more then two players)
Its works the same as normal rummy - pick up a card, throw out one at the end of your turn.
Portuguese rummy is divided into rounds:
1st Round - each player must put down 2 trips (4,4,4 or 6,6,6 etc) before adding to others cards or putting down more cards
2nd Round - 1 trip and 1 run of 4 (1,2,3,4 etc)
3rd Round - 4 of a kind (3,3,3,3) and 1 run of 4
4th Round - 3 trips
5th Round - 2 trips and 1 run of 4
6th Round - 1 trip and 1 run of 7 (K,Q,J,10,9,8,7 etc)
Only on the last round, the player needs to come out clean, which means put all their cards on the table without having one left to throw away.
Points - Any Jokers - counts 50 each
Ace - counts 25 each
King, Queen, Jack - counts 10 each
Every other card - counts 5 each
Take the points tally at the end of each round.
Note that - 2's count as jokers as well as normal jokers
- You can only replace a joker/2 if you have a clubs card (example replace a 10 of clubs for the
joker in the following K,Q,J,joker,9 )
Person with the least amount of points at the end of round 6 wins!
Hopefully I havent left out any essential details. Happy playing :)
