Cursed Bottle

Full rules

1. Overview
2. The cards
3. Setup
4. Playing a trick
5. End of a hand
6. Winning the game
7. Two players
8. Tips for beginners
9. Variants

Overview

Cursed Bottle is a trick-taking game about a bottle that grants every wish – but whoever still owns it at the end is doomed. In each trick, everybody plays one card and one card wins them all. Usually the highest card wins; but if someone plays a card below the bottle's price, the highest such card wins the trick and buys the bottle, and that card becomes the new, lower price. The bottle changes hands again and again, getting cheaper each time, until nobody can undercut it any more. At the end of a hand, everybody scores the points in their tricks – except the bottle's owner, who scores nothing and loses points instead. The first player to 100 points wins.

• Players: 2–4; for 2 you play with a dummy player (see "Two players").
• You need: one standard deck with 2 jokers, and paper and pencil (or the score pad).

Cursed Bottle is our own adaptation for an ordinary deck, inspired by The Bottle Imp (Flaschenteufel, Günter Cornett, 1995), which is based on Robert Louis Stevenson's story "The Bottle Imp". It has not been playtested yet.

What differs from the original: the original has its own 37 cards numbered 1 to 37 in three colours, with the colours spread unevenly (one colour holds most of the low cards, another most of the high ones), and coins on each card for scoring. Here the 36 cards are Ace to Queen in three suits, ranked first by rank and then by suit, so every suit has one card of each rank. The point values are our own, and a joker stands for the starting price (the original's 19). The play and the scoring rules are those of the original.

The cards

Take ♠ ♥ ♦ from Ace to Queen – 36 cards – and the two jokers. The clubs and the Kings stay in the box.

Every card has its own place in one long order, from the lowest, the A♦, to the highest, the Q♠:

• first the rank counts: A (lowest) 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 J Q (highest);
• between cards of the same rank, the suit decides: ♦ lowest, then ♥, then ♠ (as in Bridge).

So the order runs A♦ A♥ A♠ 2♦ 2♥ 2♠ 3♦ … Q♦ Q♥ Q♠. The 7♦ is higher than the 6♠, and the 5♥ is higher than the 5♦.

One joker is the starting price: it counts as "6½" – between the 6♠ and the 7♦. Exactly 18 cards lie below it and 18 above. The other joker is the bottle (a coin or any small object works too).

Setup

1. Choose a dealer; after each hand the deal passes to the left.
2. Put the price joker face up in the middle and the bottle joker on it. Nobody owns the bottle yet.
3. The dealer shuffles the 36 cards and deals them all: 12 each with 3 players, 9 each with 4 players. Sort your hand by rank – colour matters less in this game than usual.
4. The bottle's pile: everybody chooses one card and puts it face down under the price joker. Nobody may look at these cards until the end of the hand.
5. Passing: everybody gives one card face down to the left neighbour and one to the right neighbour. Choose both cards before you pick up the ones you get.

Playing a trick

The player to the dealer's left leads the first trick: they play any card face up. Then, clockwise, everyone adds one card.

• Follow suit: if you have a card of the suit that was led, you must play one.
• If you can't, you may play any card.

Who wins the trick?

• No card below the price: the highest card in the trick wins – whatever its suit, even if it didn't follow suit.
• One or more cards below the price: the highest of the cards below the price – the one closest to it – wins the trick, and its player buys the bottle.

Buying the bottle: the new owner takes the bottle and lays the winning card face up in front of themselves with the bottle on it. That card is the new price. The other cards of the trick go to the winner as usual. The card that showed the old price goes face down to the old owner's tricks – unless it was the price joker, which always stays in the middle with the bottle's pile. You may buy the bottle from yourself: then your old price card goes to your own tricks.

Whoever won the trick leads the next one.

Example: The price is the joker (6½). Anna leads the 9♥, Ben follows with the 5♥, Carla has no hearts and plays the 6♠, Dan plays the Q♥. The 5♥ and the 6♠ are below 6½; the 6♠ is higher, so Carla wins the trick and the bottle. She lays the 6♠ in front of her with the bottle on it – the price is now 6♠ – and takes the 9♥, 5♥ and Q♥ as her trick.

Later Dan leads the 3♥, Anna plays the 2♥, Ben the 10♥ and Carla the J♥. The 3♥ and 2♥ are below 6♠, and the 3♥ is higher: Dan buys the bottle, and the 3♥ is the new price. Carla gets her old price card, the 6♠, back into her tricks, and Dan takes the 2♥, 10♥ and J♥.

End of a hand

The hand ends when all cards have been played. Then:

• Every player who doesn't own the bottle scores the points of all cards in their tricks.
• The bottle's owner scores nothing for their own tricks, and loses the points of the cards in the bottle's pile.

Example: At the end Dan still owns the bottle. The bottle's pile holds the 8♠, Q♦, 2♥ and 10♦: 2 + 3 + 1 + 3 = 9 points. Dan scores −9. Anna, Ben and Carla score the points in their tricks.

The owner's price card and the jokers score nothing. If nobody has bought the bottle by the end, nobody is doomed: everybody simply scores their tricks.

Winning the game

Keep a running total. When one or more players reach 100 points at the end of a hand, the highest total wins (a tie at the top: play one more hand). You can also agree on a number of hands – best a multiple of the number of players, so everyone deals equally often.

Two players

Lopaka – you play against a dummy player, Lopaka, who sits to the dealer's right (so he changes seats every hand).

• Deal 11 cards each to both players and to Lopaka. The last 3 cards go face down under the price joker as the bottle's pile.
• The two players each pass one card to each other at the same time. Nobody discards; Lopaka neither gives nor gets a card.
• Lopaka's cards are laid out face up, sorted by rank.
• Lopaka plays by fixed rules, looking only at his cards and the current trick: if he can't win the trick, he plays his lowest card; if he can win, he plays his highest card that still wins; when he leads, he plays his highest card. He must follow suit like everyone, and he can end up buying the bottle.
• Everything else is as in the game for three or four. Lopaka's score doesn't count.

Example: The price is 6½. Anna leads the 10♠, Ben plays the 7♠. Lopaka holds the 2♠, 5♠, 9♠, J♠ and some hearts. He must follow in spades. He can win with the 2♠, the 5♠ (both below the price) or the J♠ (higher than the 10♠), so he plays the highest of them, the J♠.

Tips for beginners

• Pass and discard low cards – but remember who got them. If you pass someone the A♥, you know who can still undercut a low price.
• Void a suit. If you have no cards of a suit, you may play anything when it is led – ideal to drop a low card at the right moment.
• Play cards just under the price early. While the price is high, a 5 or 6 buys the bottle together with a good trick, and someone will probably buy it back from you.
• Count the low cards. Once the price is low, ask yourself who can still undercut it. The A♦ can never be undercut.
• High cards are risky too: winning a trick with the Q♠ is no use if the next player drops a 3 below the price and takes the trick and the bottle.

Variants

All optional – agree before you start.

• The bright house (two players, from the original): each player gets two hands of 9 cards. Pick up the first, put one card under the price joker and pass one to your opponent; then do the same with the second. Now choose which of your two hands lies face up in front of you and which you keep in your hand. Each trick has four cards: the leader plays from their open hand, then the other player from their open hand, then the leader from their hidden hand, then the other player from their hidden hand.
• Hot bottle: the bottle's owner also scores all their own tricks as minus points. A Paris game shop's translation of the rules once said this by mistake, and its players liked how it lets the others catch up with a leader.