PlayingCards/Cheat

General

The object of the game is to be the first to get rid of all your cards.

The entire deck is dealt out. If some people have more cards than others, tough. The person to the dealer's left begins.

The rules do not have to be followed, but anyone who suspects someone of cheating may call them on it; if the suspicions are proved correct, the cheater is penalised, otherwise the caller is.

Ace is both high and low; so 2 is one rank away from ace, as is King.

Turns

Each person, in their turn, plays one or more cards on the table face down, at the same time stating what they are. The cards must all have the same rank, and must either be the same rank or one rank lower or higher as the last cards played on the table. If the table is empty, any rank may be played.

The player to that person's left will play next turn. It is the current player's turn until the next person to play actually plays cards on the table. People may only be accused of cheating in their turn; it is too late afterwards.

Cheating

The most common form of cheating is to lie about the rank of the cards you are playing. Sometimes people also lie about the number of cards they played; this may be tricky for the accuser to prove (suppose someone calls "two aces", but playes a queen with the two aces on top; unless they are watched carefully, it doesn't look like they cheated).

: The best games of this, IMHO, degenerate into such calls as "Fourteen platypi" ((Should be platypusses -- Senji)) ((So? I was Cheating ;) --Vitenka)) and "One queen {whilst slapping down over two hundred cards}". Since it is not always advantageous to call out a player, even when they are obviously cheating, such calls sometimes pass - leading to increased silliness the next round, and a progressive DeathSpiral? into insanity.