Commerce

Full rules

1. Overview
2. The hands
3. Setup
4. Playing a turn
5. Showdown and payments
6. Winning the game
7. Tips for beginners
8. Variants

Overview

Commerce is an old round game for a crowd, in which everyone tries to improve a hand of three cards by exchanging them. On your turn you either trade a card with the dealer – who acts as a banker and charges a chip for it – or barter a card, unseen, with your neighbour. When someone is happy with their hand, they knock; all hands are shown, and the best one wins the pool of chips. The best hand is a tricon (three of a kind), then a sequence (a run in one suit), then the highest point (card values in one suit).

These rules follow the "new way" of Hoyle's Games (1842 edition) and Foster's Complete Hoyle (1897). The older way of playing, with three face-up cards on the table and three lives, is given under Variants: it is almost the same game as Schwimmen, which probably descends from it. Commerce itself is hardly played any more.

• Players: 3–12; best with 5–8.
• You need: one standard 52-card deck without jokers, and chips (or counters, matches) – about 20 per person. Play for chips only.

The hands

Only one of these counts for each hand. A higher kind always beats a lower one:

1. Tricon – three cards of the same rank, e.g. 7♣ 7♥ 7♦. Three Aces are the best, three 2s the lowest tricon.
2. Sequence – three cards in a row, all of the same suit, e.g. 9♠ 10♠ J♠. The Ace can be high (Q K A) or low (A 2 3), but there is no wrap-around (K A 2 is not a sequence). A higher sequence beats a lower one.
3. Point – the total of the cards of one suit in your hand, if you have at least two cards of that suit. Count Ace 11, K Q J 10 as 10 each, the other cards at face value. The highest point wins.

A pair counts for nothing; neither does a single card of a suit.

Example: K♦ 9♦ 4♣ has a point of 19 (King and 9 of diamonds). A♥ 5♥ 3♥ has a point of 19 as well, but made with three cards – see ties below. 6♠ 7♣ Q♥ has no point at all.

Ties: between two points, a point made with three cards beats one made with two. If it is still equal – or two sequences are equal – the dealer wins; if the dealer isn't involved, the player nearest the dealer's left.

Setup

1. Choose the first dealer. After each deal, the deal passes to the left.
2. Everyone puts one chip into the middle. This is the pool.
3. The dealer shuffles, another player cuts, and the dealer deals three cards face down to each player, one at a time. The rest of the deck stays face down in front of the dealer: this is the stock.

Agree beforehand how many deals to play – for example, until everyone has dealt once or twice.

Playing a turn

Starting with the player on the dealer's left and going clockwise, each player on their turn does exactly one of these:

• Trade (Hoyle's "for ready money"): give one card and one chip to the dealer. The dealer puts the card under the stock and gives you the top card of the stock. The chip is the dealer's to keep – not part of the pool. When the dealer trades on their own turn, it costs them nothing.
• Barter: push one card face down to the next player on your left. They must accept it, and must first give you one of their own cards, face down, before they look at yours.
• Knock: tap the table – you stand on your hand. All trading stops at once, and everyone shows their cards.

The turns go round and round the table until somebody knocks. (The 1842 Hoyle deals and barters to the right, Foster to the left; either works.) If you have just traded into a hand you are happy with – a tricon, say – you may knock straight away at the end of the same turn.

Example: Anna deals. Ben holds K♠ 9♠ 4♥ (point 19). He trades: he gives the 4♥ and a chip to Anna and gets the 10♠ – now K♠ 10♠ 9♠, a point of 29 with three cards. Carla holds 7♣ 7♥ 3♣ and barters the 3♣ to Dan, who first has to give her one of his cards: the 7♦. Carla has a tricon of 7s and knocks.

Showdown and payments

All hands are turned face up and the best hand wins the pool. Then the dealer pays extra:

• If the dealer did not win, the dealer pays 1 chip to the winner.
• If the dealer's hand was of the same kind as the winning hand (both tricons, both sequences or both points), but lower, the dealer pays 1 chip to every other player instead.

Example (continued): Carla's tricon beats Ben's point of 29 and takes the pool. Anna, the dealer, has only a point, so she pays Carla 1 chip. Had Anna held three 4s, she would have had to pay 1 chip to each player.

If nobody has even a point – very rare – the old books don't say; we suggest leaving the pool for the next deal.

Winning the game

After the agreed number of deals, whoever has the most chips wins.

Tips for beginners

• The dealer gets a chip for every trade and trades for free, which is why the deal is an advantage.
• Bartering is free, but blind: you give away a card you don't need and get a random one of your neighbour's.
• Every barter changes your neighbour's hand too – you might hand them the card they were waiting for.
• A three-card point of 25 or more is a decent hand to knock on. With a tricon or a high sequence, knock at once.

Variants

Optional – agree before you start.

• Commerce the old way (Hoyle): everyone gets three chips as lives, and three cards are dealt face up to the middle as well. Before looking at their own hand, the dealer may take the three middle cards instead and must then keep them. Then, in turn, each player may swap one or more of their cards for middle cards, round and round, until nobody wants to change any more; a player who has once stood may not change again. The best hand takes an agreed number of chips from the pool; the worst hand loses a life ("going up"). The first player to lose all three lives may buy a horse – one extra life for a third of the original stake, paid into the pool. The last player with lives left takes the rest of the pool, the final sweep. This is very close to Schwimmen.
• More hands (Foster): add a flush (three cards of one suit, ranked by its point) between sequence and point, and a pair above the point.
• Pounce (1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica): in the old way, a player with a tricon who sees the fourth card of that rank in the middle calls "Pounce!" and takes it; four of a kind beats every three-card hand.