"COONCAN."

Marlborough Express, Volume XLVI, Issue 195, 17 August 1912, Page 2

"COONCAN."

■*&>■■■ LATEST CARD GAME CRAZE,

'Cooncan," says the Dail Mail, has become the rage. It is the game of tlie season in clubs and country houses. Auction bridge has been squeezed into a distant corner near the window, and bridge is almost forgotten. "Cooncan" is played every day in many London clubs. The difficulty is to get a table. Men who ] knew all the leads at whist, doubled j freely at bridge, and plunged with prudence at "auction, >r now sit absorbed by the fascinating little problems of "cooncan.' 1 The Bath Glub (which, with -the Portland Club, standardised the rules of auction bridge) has formulated a set of rules.

For the present there are local varia-j tions of rules pertaining; to nearly all) the clubs and houses in which the I game is played. The Bath Club-, has I decided that the game may be played by any number of players not exceeding fire. There are no partners. Each, hand' is a complete game", so that a player can "cut-in" whenever there is room for him and drop out whenever he pleases. Only one player can win. /All the rest pay to him, according to the value of the "pips" on the cards which they have not succeeded in playing. The club points are threepence and the maximum one shilling; the pool, if any, is limited to twenty points. No 'side bets are allowed.

The game is played with two packs of ordinary cards and two. jokers. All are shuffled together. Ten cards are dealt to each player, a.nd another turned up, to form the nucleus of a "rubbish heap." As his turn comes player takes up a card, which may either be the top card! of the "rubbish heap" or the undisclosed top card of the pack, and in return for it places .another, face, upwards, on the top of the heap. His object then is to get rid of" all his cards before anybody else. He can lay down, face upwards, either three or morei cards of a, value, or a sequence of,! three or more cards of the same suit.! He plays them when he pleases; if he! prefers, he may hold them up for &\ larger coup or to prevent opening up the .field for other players. The next player does exactly the same—with this addition; he mad add a singlecard, or more, to anybody's disclosed, sequences or sets of a value. He may even shift the joker to the other end of a sequence if that suits him, but the joker can only be shifted once. And. so the game goes on until one player has no more cards; in his hand,; and he is the winner. Women are exceedingly fond of the game.. It has the engaging element of chance tempered with some judgment, and is devoid of the finer intricacies of bridge. ' Cooncan," so called because any "coon can" play it, came to this' country at the beginning of the season—from America, it is believed. Oldfashioned card-players, robbed of4 their rubber of bridge by this devastating new craze speak of it contemptuously as "a sort of glorified Old Maid."