Arab Card Games

This Saturday I had two of my Qatari friends over to play some card games. Qataris, like most Muslims, do not gamble but that does not stop them from playing card games for entertainment.

So while eating chips and dip they taught me two card games currently popular in Qatar.


1) “Hand” (Yes, an English word. It is not called by the Arabic word for “hand” (yad))

This game is similar to gin rummy except that it is played with two decks and your hand is 14 cards. Much like Rummy you gather three of a kinds, four of a kinds, and runs of suited cards but because you play with two decks any 3 or 4 of a kind must have cards of different suits. Your four Kings cannot contain two King of diamonds. However you cannot put down your runs/kinds while you play -- you have to wait until you have all 14 cards in runs and kinds before you can put them down. Also, unlike Rummy, with the exception of the very first play you cannot pick up the card that's been discarded by the previous player unless you are using it to put your 14-card hand down. This means you need to keep track of what cards get discarded since you will have no chance to get them later and possibly change your strategy once certain cards you need have been discarded by other players. There are also two jokers in the deck and they are wild but you can only use one of them to complete your hand. If for some reason you have both jokers then you will have to discard one of them, typically when you finish your hand.

Scoring is unusual. Lowest score wins. A player who finishes the hand loses 60 points and the other players get 200 points. However there are also multipliers: finishing by discarding a joker is double points, having your hand all the same color is double points, having your hand all the same suit I think is worth even more and so on. I believe there are all sorts of local rules and variants that adjusts the scores as well (for example, one of my Qatari friends said his friends tend to play that if someone completed their hand by picking up someone else's discard then the player who made that discard gains 50 additional points). You play a total of nine rounds and whoever has the least points wins.

Because you can never pick up the card that's been discarded everyone spends the early rounds simply drawing the top card and quickly discarding. The game is fast, people play with a lot of speed so that you hopefully will not be able to keep track of what's been discarded.

This game can get serious, in the comments section some guy is, like, all-caps freaking out about aspects of the rules. Just ask other people at the table how to play and they'll help you.



2) Brazillia (also Arabic for "Brazilian woman" but may be coincidental, my friends had no idea why it's called that)

[May 19, 2011 update: my friend Abdulla did some research and discovered two things:

1) in North America the game is known as buraco. The link has a better description than my blog post.

2) it likely got its Qatar name because a member of the royal family was introduced to it during a trip to Brazil and he introduced it to Qatar. That sounds like an urban legend to me though.]

This game also requires two decks. Players are dealt 11 cards and much like Rummy you have to do runs/kinds. Two side decks of 11 cards each are also dealt. The difference here is you can drop run/kinds once you have three or more and can add to them as the game progresses (so if you have three Kings dropped and draw a King you can simply add it to the three on the table already) but they don't count for a score unless you have seven cards (a run of seven or seven of a kind). Anytime when it is your turn you can pick up the discard pile -- but you have to pick up the entire discard pile.

2s are wild but you can only use a single 2 to complete any of the run/kinds you drop. Once you have included a 2 with a run/kind you cannot get it back, even if you draw the card that the 2 was representing. You can play that card though and have the 2 be a different card in the run. So for example if you put down 9-10-2-Q-K of spades, and later draw the Jack of Spades, you can put it down and now have 2-9-10-J-Q-K, with the 2 being an 8 or A.

You cannot get rid of the last card in your hand unless it is used to complete a run/kind of seven cards, though some house rules allow you to put the last card in the discard pile. Once that is done you're allowed to pick up a stack of 11 cards (previously dealt and kept to the side). After that once you have no cards you can grab the second stack of 11, if there are no stacks remaining the game is over.

When the game ends you count up your score. You get 100 points for every group of seven cards you put down with a bonus 100 if no wilds were used in the seven cards, 100 points for being the first to finish, bonus points if a 2 was used in it but not as a wildcard, -100 if your team never managed to pick up one of the extra stacks of 11, and then you also add up the value of the cards on the table (3-7 worth 5, 8-K and wilds worth 10, Aces worth 15) but subtract the value of the cards that are still in your hand. There are also other little things you can do to get points which I'm sure varies by who’s playing. My friends play a variant that when you're dealing out the cards for the side stacks if you picked up a stack of 22 cards then that is worth 100 points as well.

If after the first round someone has more than 1000 points and other players have less than 1000 points then in the next round the players with more than 1000 points cannot drop any run/suits unless the point value of that is worth 75 points or more. Winner is the first to 2000 points.

If there are four players then you play two teams of two. Once you put cards down your partner can put cards on it as well to help complete the run of seven (so if you put down 7-8-9-10 of diamonds and your partner has the Jack of diamonds he can put it down during his turn). In a four player game you don't have to put down a run if you pick up the discard pile. And no you're not allowed to tell your partner what cards are in your hand.

I will try playing these card games again next time my friends and I meet up, which should allow me to understand what people are playing next time I go to a shisha café. Playing card games are popular amongst the Arab clientele there.