Shedding game · Game 5 of 388 ♠
Rolling Stone
Follow suit or pick up the whole trick – the first to empty their hand wins, but hands can swell fast.
- Players
- 4–6
- Duration
- 15 min
- Age
- 7+
- Difficulty
- easy
- Cards
- 32–48 cards (8 per player)
- Skill – Luck
- SkillLuck
- Everyone for themselves – Lots of interaction
- Everyone for themselvesLots of interaction
- Simple – Complex
- SimpleComplex
- Quick – Long
- QuickLong
Mood livelylearned in 5 minutes
Collections: Games for four · Games for five · Games for six or more · Games for kids
Score pad
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Full rules
Overview
Rolling Stone is a simple but maddening game: everyone tries to be the first to get rid of all their cards. You play cards in rounds called tricks and must play the same suit as the first card. If you can't, you must pick up all the cards played so far – so just when you're nearly out, your hand can swell up again.
- Players: 4–6.
- You need: one standard 52-card deck without jokers; you use only part of it.
Setup
- Pick the cards so that everyone gets 8:
| Players | Cards to use | Cards |
|---|---|---|
| 4 | A K Q J 10 9 8 7 | 32 |
| 5 | A down to 5 | 40 |
| 6 | A down to 3 | 48 |
- Cards rank from high to low: A K Q J 10 9 8 7 … – the Ace is highest.
- Choose a dealer. They shuffle and deal all the cards one at a time, clockwise, starting on their left – 8 cards each.
Playing a trick
A trick is one round in which each player adds a card to the middle.
- The player on the dealer's left leads: plays any card face up in the middle.
- Going clockwise, each player must follow suit – play a card of the same suit (♠ ♥ ♦ ♣) as the card led.
- Can't follow suit? Then you don't play a card. Instead you pick up all the cards already played to this trick and add them to your hand. The trick ends there, and you lead the next one.
- If everyone follows suit, whoever played the highest card of that suit wins the trick. The trick is put aside face down, out of the game, and the winner leads the next trick.
There are no trumps: only cards of the suit that was led count.
Example: Anna leads the 9♥. Ben plays the K♥, Carla the 7♥. Dan has no heart, so he picks up the three cards and leads next – his hand has grown by three.
Next time all four follow suit: 10♣, A♣, 8♣, J♣. The A♣ wins; the trick is put aside and its player leads.
Winning the game
As soon as a player has no cards left in their hand, the game ends and that player wins – at once, even if the trick they just played into is not finished (and nobody can force them to pick it up).
Scoring (optional)
To play several games, the winner can score the cards left in the other players' hands: Aces 1, number cards at face value, J, Q and K 10 each. Keep a running total and stop whenever you like.
Tips for beginners
- Keep a card of every suit for as long as you can – a missing suit means picking up.
- Lead a suit that you think the others have run out of: whoever can't follow picks up.
- Watch who picks up what: after a pick-up, that player suddenly has lots of that suit.
- Get rid of high cards early when you can win the trick cheaply – high cards win tricks, and won tricks leave the game.
Variants
Optional – agree before you start.
- 32 or 52 cards: older German and French rules use 32 cards (A down to 7) for up to four players and the full 52 for more; deal all the cards as evenly as possible.
Background & history
- Family: Shedding game with tricks (inflation game – hands grow when you can't follow suit)
- Origin: France, early 19th century (as Enflé)
- Also known as: Enflé (France), Schweller, Schwellen or Farbenjagd (Germany)
- Related games: Saunigeln (Austria), Rams, Getaway (Bhabhi), Durak
Rolling Stone is a trick-playing game turned upside down: you don't want to win cards, you want to get rid of them. According to the English Wikipedia, it is an early nineteenth-century French game called Enflé ("swollen"), first mentioned by Lebrun in his French games compendium of 1828. The German Wikipedia says the first German rules were published in 1853 by Ludwig von Alvensleben under the names Enfle or Schwellen – the hand "swells" when you have to pick up a trick. Von Alvensleben compared it to the game of Rams, and an 1853 French manual called it "one of the best children's games". David Parlett calls it "a simple but maddening game".
The German Wikipedia names Saunigeln as a close relative; a Viennese play of 1814 already mentions it. The site pagat.com names the whole group of inflation games – games in which players take cards into their hands during play – after Enflé, Schwellen or Rolling Stone. Other members include the South Asian game Getaway (Bhabhi), in which, when someone cannot follow suit, the player of the highest card picks up the trick.
The early rules had no scoring. Parlett suggests that the winner scores the value of the cards left in the others' hands. The English name Rolling Stone appears in American children's-game rules, such as those of the US Playing Card Company.