How to play Pluck

Three players, one deck, and somebody is going to get plucked. This is the whole game in about two minutes of reading.

The table

Three people. Everybody plays for themselves, there are no partners. The whole deck goes out, eighteen cards each, so there are eighteen books in a hand.

Your books

Every seat has a number of books it has to make, and the number depends on where you are sitting.

The dealer sits in the 9 spot. They have to make 9 books.
The next seat has to make 6.
The last seat has to make 3.

Nine and six and three is eighteen, which is the whole hand. Every book belongs to somebody. That is the part that makes the game work: if you come up short, it is because somebody else went over.

The call, in two halves

The dealer runs the hand, and they call two things at two different moments.

First, which way it plays. High takes it, or low takes it. This is called before any plucks go across, so everybody knows which cards are worth keeping.
Then the plucks are sent.
Last, what cuts. Any suit can be the trumps, not just spades, or no trump at all and the hand plays straight through. The dealer names it after the plucks, once they can see the hand they ended up with.

The dealer leads the first book, and they can lead anything, trumps and jokers included.

Which card beats which

The ace is the best card in its suit whichever way the hand is called. What changes is the run underneath it.

High: A, K, Q, J, 10, and on down.
Low: A, 2, 3, 4, 5, and on up.

Both jokers sit above the ace, either way, as long as there is a trump.

Playing it out

Follow the suit that was led if you have it. If you are void, throw whatever you like, including a trump to cut it. Whoever takes the book leads the next one.

Jokers

Jokers are wild and they are the strongest cards in the deck, above the ace of trumps. Your table can switch them off before the hand if that is how you run it.

On a no trump call, jokers carry no value at all. They cannot take a book. You can lead one, and you can throw one off any time you are void.

The dealer calls no trump and leads a joker. The next player throws the other joker on it. Whatever the third player lays down takes the book, because neither joker is worth anything. But if that third player had a spade and a spade had already been laid on the joker, they have to follow the spade. You only get to throw a joker off when you are out of the suit.

The pluck

This is where the game gets its name. When the hand is over, anybody who missed their books gets plucked by whoever went over.

You are in the 3 spot and you make 7 books. You only needed 3, so you went over by 4.

Those 4 books came off the dealer, who needed 9 and only made 5.

So you pluck the dealer 4 times. On the next deal you choose which 4 cards to send over, and they have to hand back their best card in each of those suits. Send two hearts and you are fishing for their ace and their king.

You might only get the ace and the jack back. That tells you where the king and queen are sitting. That is half the fun of it.

Jokers stay put. You cannot send one and you cannot be made to give one up.
Two people plucking the same man? Whoever owes the most books reaches in first, and gets the better of what is in there.

Keeping score

A game usually runs to 30, and whoever deals first says what this one plays to, anywhere from 30 to 100.

Scored on who gets plucked. Every book plucked off you counts against you, and the first to 30 loses it. This is the standard way and the way most tables play, because it is too easy to hand somebody books just to stop a third player when the count runs upward.
Scored on who does the plucking. Every book you pluck counts for you, and the first to 30 takes it.

The clock

You get 30 seconds a turn, for everything: the call, the plucks, and every card. Run it out and the table plays for you: the safe card, the standard call, your weakest cards on a pluck. It costs you the initiative, not the hand.

Whoever starts the table can set it to 15 seconds, 60, or turn it off altogether.

Climbing the ladder

You start on the White deck. Play the games at your level and win seventy percent of them, and the next deck opens up.

You cannot buy your way past it. A deck is not something you purchase, it is a record of what you have done. If a rung gets away from you, reset it and run it again.

Games against the house are for learning. They do not count toward the ladder.

Everybody's page is open. Tap a name at the table or in the standings and you can see the deck they earned, their record, and who they have been playing.

Deal me in

The ace's cry is a red-tailed hawk recorded by Jonathon Jongsma, CC BY-SA, via xeno-canto. The wolf and the lion are public domain recordings.