Блюк: Правила и особенности игры в козырную карточную игру

Bluke or Blook is a trick taking card game known to parts of the East Coast and the Midwest and possibly other parts of the United States of America. The game features use of the Jokers, which are sometimes referred to as the Blukes. One version goes under the name Back Alley or Blooper and appears to be a game that originated in the American military probably during the Second World War.

Bluke is best played with three or four players. Although less exciting, it can be played as a two player game. It can also be played with five or more players (up to about 15), but for larger games the dealing must be altered and the game is thereby shortened. Bluke is a trump game using a traditional poker deck of 52 cards, plus the 2 jokers. The number of cards dealt changes with every hand. To begin the game, each player draws a card from the deck. The player who draws the highest card is the first dealer. In a 2 to 4 player game, the dealer deals 13 cards to each player on the first hand, dealing clockwise. After the first hand, dealing is passed to the player on the dealer's left, who deals 12 cards on the second hand. Then 11 cards are dealt on the third hand, and so on until only 1 card is dealt, after which 2 are dealt, then 3, and so on all the way back to 13 (see more about ending the game below). Thus for a standard game of Bluke, a total of 25 hands are dealt. One player needs to be designated as score keeper and will record bids, tally scores and keep track of how many cards are to be dealt for each hand.

Once a hand has been dealt, the remaining cards (2 or more) are passed face down to the player on the dealer's left who cuts the deck (or taps it if they wish to select the top card). The dealer turns up the top card, and the suit that comes up will be the trump suit for that hand. If the card that comes up is a Bluke (one of the 2 jokers), then there is no trump for that hand. When there is trump, any card of the trump suit outranks any card of a non trump suit, with the exception of the 2 Blukes, which are the highest ranking cards in the deck. The highest card of each suit is the Ace, followed by King, Queen, Jack, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3 and 2. At the outset of the game, players must be informed which of the two Blukes is Hi Bluke and which is Lo Bluke. (Usually Hi Bluke is red while Lo Bluke is black, or Lo Bluke has small writing where Hi Bluke has none. Some decks will require markings to be added to the Bluke cards to distinguish Hi from Lo.) No card outranks Hi Bluke. Lo Bluke can only be beaten by Hi Bluke.

The player on the dealer's left lays the first card, followed in a clockwise direction by the other players, who each lay one card. The highest card takes the trick. Players must follow suit if they have it, unless they have a Bluke. Blukes may be played at any time, and this adds an element of surprise to the game, and makes the Blukes extremely powerful cards to possess.

What makes Bluke challenging is the bidding. Once the cards are dealt, the remaining cards in the blind have been cut, and the trump suit (or "no trump") is determined, each player may make a bid from 1 to the total number of cards dealt, beginning with the player on the dealer's left.

The bid is like a contract; it represents the number of tricks the player thinks they will take. However, players must be careful not to bid too high because if they take fewer tricks than the number of their bid, they go set and lose ten points times the number bid, regardless of how many tricks were actually taken. For example, John bid 4, but took no tricks, so he gets 40 points. Even if John bid 4 and took three tricks, the result is the same: 40 points. Unlike most card games, it is not only possible but very easy to find yourself starting the game with a negative score after the first hand. A truly greedy and foolish player will find him or herself deep in the hole after only a few hands.

If a player "makes" their bid, they get 10 points times the number of tricks bid, plus one point for each additional trick. For example, Betsy bid 3, and took 5 tricks. So she gets 30 for the 3 she bid, and 2 "overtricks", for a total of 32 to be added to her score.

The scorekeeper will need a fairly large sheet or pad of paper to keep the scores, making one large column for each player and within that column a small column on the left for recording the bid, with scores to be kept in the remaining (larger) column to the right. One small column to the far left is needed to write the number of cards being dealt.

The scoring example above does not tell us exactly how many tricks each player took. Here we add that information: