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.

Drawing for your seat

Every game opens with three cards face down: the nine of spades, the six of spades and the three of spades. Everybody takes one.

Nobody owns the 9 spot. Whoever opened the table draws for it like everybody else, every game, and the deal moves round the table by one after every hand anyway.

Your books

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

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.

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.

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.

Keeping score

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

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.

Eggs, and the Flawless Victory

Eggs are what you sit down with. A seat on White is 5 Eggs and all three players pay it, so there are 15 on the table before a card comes off the deck. The winner takes all three.

Go the whole game without a single book plucked off you and it is a Flawless Victory. Not the hand, the game: one pluck against you anywhere in it and it is gone. The rarest thing in Pluck, and it is called out by name on the sheet at the end.

The higher the deck, the higher the seat. Every deck costs five Eggs more than the one below it. White is 5, Black is 10, Red is 15, and it climbs like that to 80 on Diamond.

The pot climbs with it, because the pot is only ever the three seats. A win on Red pays 45 where a win on White pays 15.

Every deck you have earned stays open to you, so a thin run of Eggs is never the end of the night. Drop back to a cheaper deck and play there.

Opening the app pays 5 Eggs a day, which is a free game on White every day. Three days in a row and seven days in a row pay three days' worth, and the seventh also opens the Lucky Bonus Wheel. Games against the house do not pay.

Climbing the ladder

You start on the White deck. Win seventy percent of the games at your level and the next deck opens up.

How many games that is depends on how high you have climbed. The first four decks run 20 games, so you need 14. Yellow, Blue and Orange run 25. Pink, Brown and Grey run 30. Purple, Bronze and Silver run 40. Gold, Platinum and Diamond run 50, so the last three decks want 35 wins apiece.

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, restart it and run it again.

A restart is 30 Eggs, and there is no limit on them. Run it as many times as it takes.

Every deck you have earned stays yours to play. Start a table on any of them. Only the games on the deck you are climbing count toward opening the next one.

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.

Something wrong? Tell us

Table talk only reaches the two people sitting with you. This reaches the house.

Eggs that did not land, a deck that will not open, a player behaving badly, or an idea for the game. It comes with your name on it, so there is nothing to fill in but the message.

You have to be signed in to send this.

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.