I’ve loved card games for as long as I can remember. Lately, I’ve been more or less obsessed with poker. The bluffing aspect of the game, specifically, is something that I find really appealing. As such, yesterday evening, I decided to come up with a card game that incorporates bluffing.

There were a few elements that I wanted to include in the game, based on some other cards games that I absolutely love, namely: Sueca and Blackjack.

The game I came up with—which I’m calling “Lie 21”—is a bluffing trick-taking game where the goal of each hand is to make 21; the unholy child of Sueca, Poker, and Blackjack, if you will.

Lie 21 is played between 2 players using a French deck with 2 Jokers (42 cards; the same as a standard 52-card deck, but with the 8s, 9s, and 10s removed and the 2 Jokers added). At the start of the game, 6 cards are dealt to each player and the last card of the deck is flipped up; the suit of this last card is the trump for the duration of the game. The player that makes the first move is decided randomly, with a coin-flip, for example.

Each hand, the starting player selects three cards from the 6 in their hand, and places them on the table with 1 face-up and 2 face-down. The other player must then select three cards from their own hand and place them on the table, all of them either face-up or face-down.

If the second player’s cards are placed face-down, the trick is awarded to the first player. The face-down cards cannot be revealed to either player, and the 6 cards on the table are collected by the player that won the trick.

If the second player’s cards are placed face-up, then the first player must flip of all their own cards face-up as well. At this point, the game basically turns into a wacko Blackjack.

Cards are valued at their face value, except for the following, which are valued as indicated here:

  • A: 1 or 11
  • 7: 10
  • K: 9
  • J: 8
  • Q: 7
  • Joker: 0

I’m Portuguese, which is why the Jack is valued higher than the Queen, but this is obviously irrelevant. Feel free to switch them, if you prefer. The scoring system is based on Sueca, which is why the 7 is worth 10… If this is confusing, feel free to score the cards as you see fit, as long as you retain the descending scoring pattern for all cards (11/1, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6…).

If a player busts (goes over 21) and the other doesn’t, then the player that didn’t bust wins the trick. Otherwise, the player closest to 21 wins the trick. In case of a tie (both players busting is considered a tie), the winning hand is the one with the most trump cards. If the hands have the same number of trumps, then the hand with the highest value trump card wins (if the Ace is valued at 1 in the hand, then it is the lowest trump card, if it is valued at 11, it is the highest trump). If no trumps were player by either player and their hand is a tie, then the player that started the hand wins. Neither Joker is ever a trump card.

It’s important to note that, as there are no 2-card hands possible, two Aces is not “Blackjack”; it’s impossible to play just two Aces. Two Aces and a Joker, for example, is scored as 12. Two 7s and an Ace is scored as 21; An Ace, a 7, and Joker is also scored as 21.

After each hand, the player that won the previous trick draws 3 cards (so they have 6 cards in hand once again), followed by the losing player drawing 3 cards. Then, the player that won the last trick starts the next one.

For the last 2 hands, when the deck is empty, no cards are drawn after the winner is decided.

After the game is done, the players calculate their final score with the Sueca scoring system (120 total), wherein all cards are worth 0, except for the following, which are worth as indicated:

  • A: 11
  • 7: 10
  • K: 4
  • J: 3
  • Q: 2

The player with the most points wins (61+).

I recommend playing best-of-7 (first-to-4). Scoring over 90 is worth 2 for the winning player, and scoring 120 is an immediate sweep.

While testing the game, I also tried scoring the K, J, and Q as 9, 8 and 7, respectively, but ended up deciding against it because it led to play being very tight, with the face cards rarely being sacrificed willingly. I felt like lowering the points of the face cards to the traditional Sueca point system made the game more nuanced.

My brother and I absolutely LOVED playing this!

The bluffing element worked really well. More often than not, it’s pretty easy to get 21 on any given hand, but the trump card aspect of the game makes it much more complex to figure out who actually has a winning hand. We often bluffed each other with lower-scoring hands, to one another’s chagrin. The fact there’s plenty of cards with no points also makes this rather interesting. We often played our cards face-down, as the second player, effectively forfeiting the round and losing information, to avoid going first in the next hand. This was particularly nice when trying to get the trump card at the bottom of the deck, of course, a very common pattern in games like Briscola and such. Playing the cards face-down, as the second player, also has the benefit of withdrawing information from the other player, like the number of remaining Jokers in the deck.

At first, I was a little sceptical that the forfeiting mechanic would actually be useful, but it turned out to add another dimension to the game.

The Jokers aren’t very useful, but they do provide some value occasionally, as they add an interesting dynamic when they’re the revealed card at the start of a hand, wherein the implication is that the player has 21 with Ace-7, but the Joker itself doesn’t score any points if won in the trick.

Overall, it’s been lots of fun! Let me know if you try it out.

I also tried a couple of different versions of the game, without the Jokers.

The first was played exactly the same, except for the last hand, which was only 2 cards. The issue with this version was that it led to Aces being hoarded rather intensely until the end, as the best hand was unequivocally the Ace-Ace of trump. Additionally, this setup means the last draw is actually only 2 cards for each player. That isn’t a big deal, per se, but it’s a little annoying.

The second was played the same, but with 5 cards in hand instead of 6. This solved the last-draw problem, but the issue of hoarding Aces for the last hand remained. Additionally, having only 5 cards in-hand, as opposed to 6, means it’s harder to get 21, which resulted in a lot of dead hands, which was rather unsatisfying. I felt like 6 cards in hand really is the sweet-spot for the game. Having 5 cards in hand did mean that there was no way to “save a hand,” as in, save 3 cards for a next round, as you’d always be left with only 2 cards in hand after playing. I felt that it was impossible to square this circle, so I went with the option I had the most fun with, which was the 6-card version.

Another thing I’d like to point out is that the Jokers are, themselves, basically bricks. They’re not useless, but they aren’t very useful. However, they managed to strike a bit of a three-quarters point between the 5-card and 6-card versions of the game, in a manner of speaking. Having a Joker in your hand is painful, until it’s not. It’s great for bluffing too, and it resolved the issues with the 2-card hand at the end of the other two versions.

Overall, I think it’s a very fun game!

I do wonder if something similar already exists, but I couldn’t find anything.