Nwik - The Game With No Name

The Game With No Name (sometimes called Sweaty Herring)

From Ed Corbett, 23 Sep 2022
For 2 or 3 players

Dealing

For 3 players, 13 cards are dealt to each player. The dealer's left is the Bidder for this round; the person to his left is #2 and the 3rd person is #3.

Bidding

The Bidder has to choose which of 6 Styles will be played on this round. The Styles are:

Style	Description
1	Spades as trumps
2	Hearts, Diamonds or Clubs as trumps (Bidder chooses trumps)
3	No Trumps
4	No tricks (trying to avoid winning any tricks)
5	VIP (trumps chosen by turning over 1-3 cards)
6	Pass (the choice of Style passes to the player on the Bidder's left)

The Bidder can only choose each Style once per game, so must choose a Style from those he has not chosen before. The Bidder also has to choose the Stake for the round, being an integer from 1 to 6. The Bidder can only choose each Stake once per game, so must choose a Stake from those he has not chosen before. There are 5 rounds, so one Style and one Stake will be unused for each player at the end of the game.

For Style 2 (Hearts, Diamonds or Clubs as trumps), the Bidder chooses which suit will be trumps.

For Style 3 (No Tricks), Aces are low.

For Style 5 (VIP), trumps is determined as shown below.

After choosing the Style and Stake (and trumps if necessary), the Bidder, #2 and #3 can swap cards from their hand with the undealt cards up to the following numbers:

Player	#Cards to Swap	Target #Tricks
Bidder	5 cards	6
#2	3 cards	4
#3	2 cards	3

A player may choose to swap fewer cards than he is entitled to. In this case the unused allowance carries over to the next player and is added to the next player's card swap allowance. Each player must swap his cards "in one go", by discarding all unwanted cards first and then picking up new cards from the pile; he is not permitted to swap the cards "one by one".

VIP (Style 5)
Before swapping any cards, the top card of the undealt pile is turned over. The Bidder can accept the newly exposed suit as trumps in which case the Stake stays the same. If not, the Bidder turns over a 2nd card and can accept its suit as trumps; in this case the Stake is doubled. If not the Bidder turns over a 3rd card, its suit is trumps and the Stake is tripled.

The 1-3 cards the Bidder turned over from the undealt pile are added to his hand and count as part of the Bidder's card swap allowance. The card swap continues with the Bidder discarding up to 6 cards and then picking up cards, so he ends up with 13 cards in his hand.

Pass (Style 6)
If the Bidder selects Pass (Style 6), the Bidder first chooses the Stake, and then the 2nd player becomes Acting Bidder for the round and chooses the Style (but not the Stake) for the round. The Acting Bidder has to choose the Style from those he has not already chosen (although this will not prevent him choosing that Style again, when he is Bidder).
After this, the round continues with (i) the Acting Bidder acting as the Bidder, (ii) the player to his left acting as #2 and (iii) the 3rd player acting as #3; this includes the card swap, the target #tricks, the card play and the scoring.

Scoring

Note: the scoring in each round is a "zero sum game": the total of all the points for all the players for a round is always zero.

For Styles 1-3 & 5, the target #tricks for the players is as shown above. If a player wins exactly the target #tricks, he gets 0 points for that round. If the player wins more tricks than target, he gets points equal to the #overtricks x Stake. If a player wins fewer tricks than target, he gets negative points equal to -1 x #undertricks x Stake.

For No Tricks (Style 4), the target #tricks are reversed, so the Bidder has #3's target (3 tricks) and #3 has the Bidder's target (6 tricks). The points are also reversed: overtricks give the player negative points equal to -1 x #overtricks x Stake, undertricks give the player positive points equal to #undertricks x Stake.

Card Play

Tricks are played in the usual way with the Bidder leading the 1st trick. The winner of a trick leads the next trick. Aces are high, except in Style 2 (No Tricks).

Next Round

Cards are shuffled and cut, and dealer passes to the left.

Winning

The game is over after all players have been Bidder 5 times. The winner is the player with the greatest number points accumulated from all the rounds.

2 Player Version

For 2 players, 17 cards are dealt to each player. The #cards to swap and the target #tricks are as follows:

Player	#Cards to Swap	Target #Tricks
Bidder	7 cards	10
#2	4 cards	7

In other respects the 2 player game is the same as the 3 player version.