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Two games will
familiarize you with Hexadec: Go Fish! and
Solitaire. Then, probably the most popular
card game is Poker, so I’ll give you the
basics there. Finally, for the truly crazy
brave, I’ll give you the adaptation for
Contract Bridge. Ready? Avanti!
Go Access!
This game allows you
to use the entire deck. The basic rules
are this: Each player is dealt eight
cards. The remaining cards become the
“Draw”. Each player, in turn, asks another
if he or she has any [fill in the blank].
The other player has to give all of the
kinds of cards demanded, if they have any,
in which the player continues; otherwise,
the player asking is told to “Go Access!”
and must take a card from the Draw.
The first player with
all their cards in books on the table, and
none in hand, wins.
In Hexadec there are
four groupings of cards. There are, as
noted, number cards, zero through nine;
face cards, letters ‘A’ through ‘F’. Then
there are the Job Control Language (JCL)
cards, zero through five, which may be
considered as a fifth suit. Finally, there
are the Function cards, consisting of what
we call ‘critter cards’: Vipers, Worms and
Bugs, two of each; an Access Key card and
a Punch card; and two Hackers, Hexadec’s
equivalent of the Joker.
I have designed a
much more complicated set of rules,
involving the various functions of the
‘non-standard cards and point scoring, but
we’ll keep it simple for now.
You may ask for
specific numbers (“Do you have any
Eights?”); Face cards (“Any Alpha
Users?”); or JCL cards. When you complete
a ‘book’ of all four number or face cards,
or all six JCL cards, you must lay them
down. As for the others, ask for Bugs,
Worms, Vipers (a set of all three
constitutes a book, so there are two
possible books), Hackers, or either the
Punch or the Key if you have one of them.
The two Hackers constitute a book, as do
the Punch and Key cards.
Have fun!
Solohex
Solohex also uses the
entire deck of cards, with the exception
of the Hackers, which may be used to as a
substitute, should a card be lost (the
beat up old prototype deck I use lacks a 2
of Chips, so I use one of the Hackers.)
and is played the same way one plays
Solitaire. You lay down a tableau, then
move whatever cards you can. That means,
in the instance of number and face cards,
the next lower goes over a card of an
opposite color.
Hexadec’s colors are
blue and gold, so if you have a column
with a gold eight at the bottom, then the
card that would continue the column would
be a blue seven. As with Solitaire, all
the cards descending from the card you’re
moving move with it.
When a space for a
column opens up, you would move the ‘F’
card, which is the equivalent of the King
in traditional cards. Hence, what I call
the “King Rule”. As there are other cards,
there must be cards equivalent to the “F”.
First, consider the Job Control Language
cards to be a “fifth suit”. Therefore, the
JCL 5 would be the “King”, and would move
to the empty column, taking whatever cards
that are “attached” with it.
With the “critter
cards”, the Viper is the King, and below
it goes the Worm, then the Bug. The Punch
and Key cards are interchangeable, either
functioning as a King.
Cards are retired in
the same manner as in Solitaire. Here is a
little quirk of mine, not required, but
you may follow it if you wish. First, a
bit of nomenclature:
The four suits are
called the Chips, the Mice, the CRTs
(pronounced “carts”) and the RAMs. Yes, I
know that RAM comes in a chip, but I was
such a dummy when I was designing, and my
design partner argued with me, but we
couldn’t come up with any better ideas, so
it stuck. The CRT, by the way, stands for
Cathode Ray Tube, still found in old TVs
and monitors. Neither the primitive paint
program Don was using on his Amiga 500,
nor the monitor screen (a CRT, of course)
had the resolution to draw a picture that
still looked like a monitor when it was
tiny, so I suggested, since CRT spoken
sounded like “cart”, that the icon be a
shopping cart. Groans noted.
My brother and I
were hella Canasta players, and the game
depended on distinguishing between red and
black suits, so I had red or black borders
drawn around the graphics of the cards, so
you will see that the blue cards have a
black border, while the gold ones have
red. That is because, if hierarchy is ever
needed, the suits can be ordered according
how traditional suits would be, and that
is Chips (Clubs), Mice (Diamonds), CRTs
(Hearts, and it rhymes!) And RAMs
(Spades). Thus, you will see that, while
the other Zero cards are plain, the Zero,
or “Zip” of RAMs has the fancy artwork,
much as the Ace of Spades will in the
traditional deck.
All this certainly
qualifies as Too Much Information, but
some of it is pertinent. As I was saying,
I place the suits in order, from Chips to
RAMS. The JCL is our “fifth” suit. You can
even move the columns around to reflect
that, if you’re crave satisfaction of your
“Inner Monk”.
To retire the
number, face and JCL cards, place the
lowest above the tableau – the zero of the
five suits, and build up until all the
cards are gone, or if just all the cards
in your hand are out and it’s a done deal.
As for the other
cards, they are retired as sets. If you
get a crittercal mass of a V, a W and a
Bug (VW Bug), the set is retired to the
sixth place above the tableau. There will
of course be two of them. And finally, the
Punch and Key are a set, and are retired
as such when they are put together in the
tableau.
So all you need is
the tableau, and you’re good to go. Here
is how it’s laid out:
Put one card face
down, the next four, face down, and the
last one face up.
Then put a card face up on top of the
second card, then the next two face down,
then the fourth one face up.
Then, two cards face up on the remaining
face-down cards.
Now you build the
columns, all face-up, just lower enough
from the cards upon which they are placed
so that you can read the designations of
all the cards that are face-up.
Place cards
descending, first on the inner four, then
on the inner two, and you’re ready to play
Solohex! Here’s what you should see: a
card faced up, two face-up over one
face-down, three face-up over two
face-down, then the same, then the
penultimate column like the second, and
the last like the first (how Biblical!)
It is elegant in its
symmetry, and the added spice of the
non-standard cards will make Solohex much
more interesting than the boring old game
you’re used to. Again, have fun!
Input/Output (I/O)
“I/O, I/O, it’s off to task we go ....”
To play the Hexadec
version of poker, first discard all the
ancillary and function cards. Since there
are six face cards, the equivalent of the
royal flush would at least require all of
them, with the equivalent of the Ace, the
Zero card added, so the standard game of
I/O would be played with a seven-card
hand.
Here are the hands,
and their hierarchy:
Full hands:
Royal
flush (Executive Board)
Straight flush
(Advisory Board)
Full boat, 4 of a
kind & 3 of a kind (Superyacht)
Flush (clone)
Straight (string)
Partial hands (6):
4
of a kind + 2 of a kind (yacht)
Double triple –
two 3s of a kind (trimaran)
Triple deuce – 3
pair (also a trimaran, but trumped by a
d-t)
Full
house, 3 of a kind and a pair (sloop)
2 pair (double
binary)
3 of a kind (a
trip – very 60s)
a pair (binary)
HexaDecimal
Here’s one I thought I’d throw in.
Alternately
called NBH for nibbles, bytes &
hexes, this one’s a bit
heavier on terminology, but you can handle
it by now, right? I’ts
play is similar to Poker, in that you ante
(initialize) if you want in (go online),
and you can bet (RISC for Reward-based
Intensive Serial Computing) at several
stages.
After each player has
received six cards, the dealer lays out
three cards, face-up, which constitute
half the Data Stream. At this point,
players may do a data
dump into the recycling can
(they go out of play) and the Gates
(dealer) will replace them from the Server
(the remainder of the deck.)
Next, they may RISC
(bet), expand (raise) or exit (fold.)
After they’re all
done, they have to opportunity to save to
disk one or two cards in RAM (their hand,
that is, placed on the table to pair with
cards in the Data stream.) That is
done in this manner: Cards in RAM are
paired with cards in the data stream by
either adding or subtracting their
respective value to arrive at a nibble
(4), a byte (8), a hex (16), or
a double-hex (32, two Zips), the combined
total of cards added to a card in the DS.
The User is ten
points, the Beta eleven, and so on, to 15
for the CEO. The Zip is either zero
(to a nibble or a byte) or sixteen (to
another Zip.)
The Gates then deals
the remaining two cards, and then adds
three more to the data
stream. Another round of RISCing
commences, until, when they’re done, the
Gates warns of a power surge. At
that point, all the players’ RAM is in
jeopardy, so they save to disk as many
cards as they can.
If only one player
has successfully performed a full data
dump (saved all their cards to disk), then
they are a clear winner. If none do
so, then the value of the data “saved to
disk” are added to determine the winner.
Otherwise, those
whose surge protectors have only partially
worked and their IPS’s have only saved
partial data, the values saved to disk
determine the winner.
In the event of a tie
the Gates deals three more cards to see if
a winner emerges.
If there’s still
a tie, then they go to Crash & Burn
time (sudden death.) The deck is cut
to reveal a file on the server. That
card is added to the data stream. Any of
the tied players still having cards in RAM
may play until one cannot perform a data
dump and their whole system crashes. The
last player still “standing” in Virtual
RAM emerges victorious.
Warning: the
following is not for the faint of heart.
LAN (contract bridge)
This adaptation was
done by Life Master, Mr. Richard Lessler,
and is for the experienced user. Only the
alphanumeric cards are used.
The Bit is low as the
Zip functions as the Ace; sectors (suits)
are (as noted above) in the following
hierarchy: Chips are Clubs; Mice,
Diamonds; CRTs, Hearts & RAMs are
Spades. Book is eight tricks. Game
in a major sector—RAMs or carts—is 5
tricks over contract, 6 in a minor sector;
7 tricks constitute a slam (HT or Hostile
Takover) & 8 a major HT.
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Zero
(Ace)
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4
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First
CEO (King)
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3
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Exec. Ast.
(major Queen)
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2.5
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Developer
(minor Queen)
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2
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Cys. An.
(major Jack)
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1.5
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Beta Tester
(minor Jack)
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1
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Alpha
User (major Ten)
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0
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overByte–9
(minor Ten)
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0
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Exec. Ast.
(major Queen)
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2.5
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Developer
(minor Queen)
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2
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Cys. An.
(major Jack)
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1.5
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Beta Tester
(minor Jack)
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1
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Although 9s &
Users are not accorded points, they still
occasionally take tricks; you may choose
to give them fractionally higher point
counts with length, especially in
no-trump, during the bidding process.
In suit contracts when trump is
established by the partnership, shortness
and double suit fit add to the point
count, but be prepared to justify it.
You need 16 points
minimum to open and a good 7.5 points
(with fillers or length) to respond at the
1 level or 12 at the 2. To make game
you should have at least 36.5 points for
game in a major suit or a no-trump; 46 for
a slam or 52 for a major slam.
These evaluation
points are guidelines and will work most
of the time.
Doubling: Note
the point scoring below. If the
contract is doubled the points are
doubled; redoubling doubles the doubling.
If the contract is down more than 1
trick, use the same general ratio as in
Contract Bridge.
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25
pts./trick in no-trump
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20
"
"
in major suits
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15
"
"
+ 10 bonus pts. for the 6th
trick in minor suits
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In
all three 100 points makes game.
After book, one may
make a part score for up to 3 tricks in no
trump; up to 4 in a major suit; and up to
5 in a minor suit. Everything else
equals game or slam. Part score
meaning, of course, not making game.
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contested
rubber (each pair scoring a
game)
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.8K
(800 bits)
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un—contested
rubber
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1.2K
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slam—not
vul
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1.0K
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slam—vul)
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1.6K
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major slam
(not—vul)
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2.4K
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"
"
(vul)
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3.6K
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If
you bid any slam and make it, in addition
to regular points (15, 20, 25/trick) you
get both slam and, if it completes a
rubber, rubber honors as well. With
an incomplete
rubber the last to
make game gets 80 points non vul or 160,
vul. Honor points for game when
quitting a rubber: 400 if one team is vul,
0 if both are.
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Tricks down
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Points
doubled
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Not vul
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Vul
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128
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1
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128
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256
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256
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2
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386
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640
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386
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3
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640
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640
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640
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4
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112
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1512
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1512
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5
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1512
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1640
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1640
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6
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1640
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2128
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7
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2128
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2560
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8
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2560
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3200
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