h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

My family play a game not mentioned in the list above. I would imagine that it has another name according to Waddies.

The game is estimation.

3 or more people, a deck of cards, a scrap of paper and a pen.

7 cards are dealt to each player and then the player to the left of the dealer estimates the number of cards he/she will win in the next hand.

This is then written down under the players name.

The player who calls the highest number of cards gets to pick trumps.

Each player estimates the number of tricks they will win until the bidding comes to the dealer. The dealer then bids BUT the total bids of the players cannot add up to the number of players.

Say there were four players A,B,C and D for Dealer on a 7 hand.

A would call 3, B would call 1, C would call 1. This would mean the dealer could not call 2. He could call any number either side of that from 0 to 7 but not 2.

As an added bonus if the dealer called more than player A he would choose trumps for that hand. If he called less than 3 he would not get to choose trumps.

After the bids have been placed. Person A (following the current example) would lead for the first hand. Once the four cards have been played. The winner takes the cards played and places them in front of himself, the winner then leads for the second round.

This continues until all 7 hands have been played. After this occurs the number of tricks won is counted up and checked against that bid by each player.

This will typically sound like this

A called 3 got 2. B called 1 got 1, C called 1 got 0, D called 4 got 4.

Which means that Player A bid that he would win 3 out of the 7 hands but only won 2. He will score 2 points. Player B bid that he would win 1 hand and did. He scores 11 points. Player C also bid 1 but didn't win any hands. He scores 0 and Player D bid that he would win four hands. This gave him trumps for the round and he used it to win the four hands he needed. He scores 14 points.

A full scoring would look like this

if you got 0 you get 0 unless you called 0 which scores 8
If you won 1 you get 1 unless you called 1 which scores 11
If you won 2 you get 2 unless you called 2 which scores 12
If you won 3 you get 3 unless you called 3 which scores 13
and so on up to 7.

As you can see. There is more reward for positive play.

Once that round has finished. The deck is reformed,shuffled and 6 cards are dealt by player A. First bid is from Player B and last by Player A. Player B then will play the first card of the 6 hand.

This process continues down to the point where each player is dealt 1 card each. The players then call either 1 or 0 with the dealer unable to go 0 if 1 had been called and 1 if 0 had been called.The cards are then cut to determine trumps and the hand played and scored as normal.

The number of cards dealt then goes up to 7. This being the final round large bids often occur to try to stretch to the player in front.

At the end of the seventh hand scores are toted up and the person who scored most points declared the winner. A score of 100 or more indicates a good game where the player has called correctly most of the time.

Any ideas what this is also called? after that effort i might publish it.