Kentucky Rook Rules

Kentucky Rook is the most popular game that can be played using the Rook Deck. It is also the official tournament game.

Set Up

First you need a standard Rook Deck. You then take out the 1s 2s 3s and 4s from the deck, the dealer shuffles and cuts the deck.

Finally the dealer deals the cards so that everyone has 9 cards and there are 5 cards in the middle of the board. These 5 cards in the middle are called the nest.

Bidding

After the deal the players bid for the privilege of using the cards in the nest and naming the trump suit. The bidding starts with the person to the left of the dealer and passes around clockwise. The minimum bid is 100 and all bids must be increased by multiples of 5.

If a player chooses not to increase the bid the bidding passes to the next player. Once a player passes they may not bid for the remainder of the round. Once all, but 1 of the players have passed the player with the highest bid gets to pick up the nest. Then they put any 5 cards back into the nest. They then name the trump suit.

Play Kentucky rook

Once the trump suit is been named the play starts with the person to the left of the dealer. That person can play any card face up on the center of the table. The play goes clockwise around the table. Each player may either play a card with the same suit as the first card, or the Rook card.

If a player reneges, or fails to play the same suit when he or she could have, the error may be corrected in the next play. If it is not discovered until later, the round ends, and the team that made the error loses a number of points equal to the bid, regardless of which team made the bid. The opposing team scores all the counters they captured before the error was discovered.choose to play a card of the trump suit.

Finally after each play the person who played the highest card from the trump suit, or if no trump suit cards where played, the highest card from the initial suit wins that set. They get to take the cards and put them face down in front of them. PS the Rook card is the highest possible card so if it is played the player wins the cards automatically.

Scoring Kentucky rook

When all rounds have been played each team adds up the value of the cards it won. If the bidding team does not get at least the bid that they made then they will lose points equal to the amount of the bid.

The first team to reach 300 points wins.