Polignac

Full rules

1. Overview
2. The cards
3. Setup
4. Capot
5. Playing a deal
6. Paying for Jacks
7. Winning the game
8. Tips for beginners
9. Variants

Overview

Polignac, also called Quatre Valets or Four Jacks, is an old French trick-avoidance game. A trick is one card from each player; the highest card of the suit led wins them all. You want to avoid winning tricks that contain a Jack – and above all the Jack of Spades, called Polignac, which counts double. The first player to collect a set number of penalty points loses. Hardly anyone plays it today; it is here for its history and because it still plays well. The rules follow R. F. Foster's Complete Hoyle (1897), with the French rules from French reference books under Variants. Its cousin Slobberhannes punishes the first and last tricks and the Q♣ instead.

• Players: 4 is best; 5 to 7 can play too (3 and 8 under Variants).
• You need: a 32-card deck – take the 2s, 3s, 4s, 5s and 6s out of a standard deck – and 20 chips or counters per player (or a score sheet).

The cards

Use the A K Q J 10 9 8 7 of each suit. In the French game they rank in an unusual order, from high to low:

K Q J A 10 9 8 7

The King is highest and the Ace comes between the Jack and the 10. There are no trumps.

With five or more players, also take out the 7♣ and 7♠, leaving 30 cards.

Setup

1. Dealer: choose the first dealer at random. After each deal, the turn to deal passes to the left.
2. Chips: everyone starts with 20 chips (for a shorter game, 10).
3. Deal: the dealer shuffles and deals out the whole deck, clockwise:

Capot

Before the first card is played, any player who thinks they can win every trick may announce capot. The others then try to stop them.

• If the capot player wins all the tricks, they pay nothing, and every other player pays 5 chips – one for each Jack and one extra for Polignac.
• If they lose even one trick, the deal is scored normally: everyone pays for the Jacks they took.

Playing a deal

1. The player on the dealer's left leads (plays the first card to) the first trick – any card.
2. The others play one card each, clockwise. You must follow suit – play a card of the suit led – if you can. If you can't, you may play any card; this is your chance to get rid of a Jack.
3. The highest card of the suit led wins the trick, in the order K Q J A 10 9 8 7. Cards of other suits never win.
4. The winner of a trick leads to the next one.

Paying for Jacks

The moment you win a trick with a Jack in it, you pay into the middle:

Keep won Jacks face up in front of you so everyone can see them. Each deal costs 5 chips in all.

Example: Anna leads the 9♥. Ben plays the J♥, Carla the A♥, Dan the 10♥. The Jack beats the Ace, so Ben wins his own Jack and pays 1 chip. Ben leads the 8♠; Carla has no spades and throws away the J♣. Dan plays the J♠ and Anna the 7♠ – Dan's Jack is the highest spade, so Dan takes Polignac and the J♣: 3 chips.

Winning the game

The first player to lose all their chips loses the game; everyone else wins. With a score sheet, write down the penalty points instead: the first to reach 20 (or 10) loses. If you play for a stake, the loser pays each other player one chip for every point that player still had to go.

Tips for beginners

• Remember the odd ranking: the Jack beats the Ace. An Ace is fairly safe, a King is the most dangerous card to hold.
• A Jack is safest with plenty of low cards of its suit – K and Q above it will usually fall first.
• When you can't follow suit, throw away your Jacks – best of all Polignac.
• With three or four Kings and Queens in one suit, think about capot – but one lost trick ruins it.

Variants

• Ace high: in England and America, according to Foster, the cards usually ranked A K Q J 10 9 8 7. Some sources then make the Queens the penalty cards instead of the Jacks.
• French rules (French reference books of the 19th and 20th centuries):
• 3 to 8 players. Take out the two red 7s with 3, 5 or 6 players, all four 7s with 7 players. Deal all the cards, two at a time (and one more if the number is odd). 3 players get 10 each, 8 players 4 each.
• Deal and play go anticlockwise; the player on the dealer's right leads.
• The game is usually to 20 points, sometimes up to 50.
• Chelem: a player who wins every trick, even without announcing it, scores nothing, and everyone else scores 5.
• La Générale: a player who announces it just after the deal leads the first card themselves. If they fail, they score 5 points whatever they took, and the others score their Jacks.