Ballroom dancing game.

Publications in the Traditions section

Games for adult companies

In secular salons of the 19th century, they not only read poetry, talked about economics and politics, but also spent time playing games. Kultura.RF tells what kind of leisure was popular at a time when there was no television, no Internet, not even electricity.

Card games

In the 19th century, cards were very popular, but they were considered not the most decent entertainment. They were called the "shame of living rooms", "corruption of morals" and "brake of enlightenment." Culturologist Yuri Lotman noted that gambling met with “strong moral condemnation,” and in the late 18th and early 19th centuries it was formally banned as immoral. At the evenings with the historian Nikolai Karamzin, for example, they never played cards. However, in many other salons, card games flourished. The Decembrist Mikhail Bestuzhev-Ryumin recalled that often the owners of the salons cheated during the games: they discussed gestures in advance and “pulled” a hundred rubles from the players.

Books on secular etiquette, such as Rules of Social Life and Etiquette: Good Taste, compiled by Yuryev and Vladimirsky, warned young people against gambling addiction, which led to debt and bankruptcy: “We have seen many examples when this sad passion caused the death of an entire family; when she, this passion, finally killed all moral principles in a person..

But despite this, cards were played everywhere: “... everyone: both ladies, and girls, and young men, preferring a green field to dancing. This is of course a sad phenomenon, but what to do: “live with wolves, howl like wolves”, - stated the compilers of the collection of secular manners.

In society, it was customary to separate gambling card games, in which chance prevailed, and those where the winnings depended on the quick wit and attentiveness of the players.

Yuri Lotman, in his book on the history of Russian culture, wrote that in Russia in the 19th century, the most popular games were pharaoh and shtosse (shtoss), in which chance determined victory. Fyodor Dostoevsky's brother Andrei recalled that his brother's card parties always ended in a gambling game of shtoss.

The popularity of this card game was also reflected in Russian literature. Shtoss was played by Hermann and Chekalinsky in The Queen of Spades by Alexander Pushkin, Arbenin in Mikhail Lermontov's Masquerade, Khlestakov in Nikolai Gogol's The Government Inspector, Nikolai Rostov in Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace and other characters.

Rules of the game of shtoss (according to the book by Yu.M. Lotman "Conversations about Russian culture")

The players are divided into a banker, who throws cards, and a punter (ponte - “increase the bet”). The game can be played one-on-one or with the participation of several punters. Each player receives a deck of cards. Punters choose one card from the deck, on which they bet an amount equal to that announced by the banker. Then, one by one, the cards from the banker's deck are opened, and a match with the hidden card brings victory to the punter. As a rule, the banker and punters are located on opposite sides of an elongated rectangular table covered with green cloth, which serves to record rates and debts. All calculations are made on the same green cloth.

Outdoor games

In many houses it was customary to amuse themselves between dances and music with “innocent games” - that was what they called petits-jeux(from the French "little games"), short-term mobile entertainment. Most of these games were tracing-paper from yard folk amusements. For example, the young master Aleksey Berestov, the hero of Pushkin's story "The Young Lady-Peasant Woman", played with the girls in the burners - the original folk fun.

Heinrich Semiradsky. Chopin playing the piano in the salon of Prince Radziwill. 1887. Private collection

One of the most popular petits-jeux- Fanta - has come down to our days. According to the rules of the game, each player puts forfeits in a hat. After that, the leader, with his eyes closed, takes out a phantom and gives the owner a variety of tasks: to sing like a cock, jump on one leg, and the like. In the book “Rules of social life and etiquette: Good form. A collection of tips and instructions for various occasions in home and social life, there are examples of several more popular outdoor games for adult companies.

rhymes

The players sit in a circle. One of the players throws a handkerchief to someone and at the same time pronounces a word, while the other must catch the handkerchief and answer in rhyme - and so on in a circle. The more difficult the hidden word, the more unexpected and funnier the rhyme turns out.

The birds are flying

The players sit around the table, on which they put their index fingers. One of the players begins to list animate and inanimate objects that can fly, while the others must raise their fingers up. If the player raised their fingers when the name of an object that cannot fly was spoken, they lost.

The mail game

Each participant in this game is given a piece of paper on which each writes a question. These pieces of paper are put in a hat and mixed, then, in turn, each of the players takes out one piece of paper and, without reading the question, writes the answer on the back, after which he puts the piece of paper in another hat. When all the answers are written, the pieces of paper are taken out and the questions and answers are read aloud - incombinations of questions and answers become puns.

double recitation

One girl sits on the lap of another, which is completely hidden by a veil, and reads poetry. The second girl tries to interfere with her with various gestures and make the observers laugh. The game ends if the reader laughs.

Toilet

The players are called different items of clothing, and the host takes turns naming them. At the command "The whole toilet!" players must quickly get up from their seats and change them. Who does not have time to take a place becomes a loser. There is a known case when Nicholas I himself was the manager of the game in the Nikolaev Palace, and one of the players took the chair before the empress, but was only encouraged by the emperor for that.

Board games

In the 19th century, board games came into vogue: they, as now, had a playing field, figures with which the players walked, and a dice that determined the number of points or “steps”. It is believed that the predecessor of this fun was the old game "Goose", in which it was necessary to reach the finish line as quickly as possible, collecting more geese along the way.

The games of the 19th century became a kind of journey: for example, in "Journey through Russia" it was necessary to get on a locomotive from Odessa to Moscow as quickly as possible, having independently developed a route through Kyiv or through Kursk. And the game "To Paris for an Exhibition" had to be in time for the start of the world exposition of the achievements of the economy in Paris.

Often board games were educational in nature. In the historical strategy "Battle of Sinop", players were asked to play the theater of military operations. One spoke for Russia, the other represented the military interests of Turkey. There was also a variant of the game of "Goosek", which required impeccable mathematical abilities to win. The playing field was a set of cells with puzzles: you had to quickly multiply or divide two- and three-digit numbers. For the correct answer, the player received "money" from the general bank, for the defeat - he contributed his own to the general treasury.

Lotto

Lotto came to Russia from Italy in the 18th century and immediately became very popular. It was played not only at secular evenings, but also in the family circle. The heroine of Chekhov's "The Seagull" Irina Arkadina said: “When the long autumn evenings come, lotto is played here. Take a look here: the old lotto, which the late mother still played with us when we were children..

Over the years of the game's existence, its rules have not changed. Participants receive cards with numbers, the leader pulls kegs from the bag and calls the numbers. The winner is the one who first closes the horizontal row. The game reached its peak of popularity by the 1840s, when lotto was often played for money in secular clubs. The passion of the players reached the point that hundreds of rubles were lost per game. The fashion for lotto gambling has led to the fact that gambling in public places has been declared illegal. However, this did not affect people's love: they still play lotto.

Puzel

Puzel, or, as we call them today, puzzles, was invented by the English cartographer and grapher John Spilsbury. He glued the geographical map on the board, sawed it into pieces (puzzles) and invited the children to assemble the complete picture from memory. Puzzles came to Russia in the 19th century and became a parlor game. They were called "puzels" in the German manner, or "puzels" in French. Then, not maps were collected from puzels, but small picturesque paintings depicting a landscape or still life. In the book Luzhin's Defense, Vladimir Nabokov wrote about a new hobby for children and adults: “In that year, English fashion invented folding pictures for adults, “puzels” ... carved in an extremely whimsical way ... Luzhin felt amazing excitement from the exact combinations of these colorful pieces, forming a distinct picture at the last moment. Aunt asked: "For God's sake, do not lose anything!" Sometimes my father would come in, look at the pieces, hold out his hand to the table, say: “This, undoubtedly, should lie here,” and then Luzhin, without turning around, muttered: “Stupidity, stupidity, don’t interfere.”.

Introduction to the table of contents

Any organizer of a ball or dance evening sooner or later asks the question - what to do with guests who want to take a break from dancing, or those who do not know the program very well and may get bored. Small talk is not given to everyone with the same ease with which they entertained our ancestors, brought up in the traditions of light parlor chatter (or, conversely, complex court intrigues). It happens that from trying to come up with a topic for conversation, to find where to put your hands, and at the same time maintain a kind facial expression, guests get tired no less, if not more, than from the fastest galliards or polkas.

Obviously, the same questions occupied the hosts in the 19th and 17th centuries, and at any other time, with the only difference being that the culture of spending time together was alive and did not have to be modeled or recreated. However, it is precisely the difference in general education, in habits and skills that creates difficulties for us when trying to use the "experience of our ancestors." I will give only two well-known examples - joint music-making and cotillion. Playing musical instruments, accompanying each other in the performance of arias, romances or popular songs, joint performance of this or that work for the entertainment of the public or for one's own pleasure was a natural occupation for any educated person from the Middle Ages to the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. How many can do it today? Alas. The lack of knowledge is the first reason for the difficulties that arise when recreating the ballroom "life". The second is the norms of behavior that have changed a lot since ancient and not very ancient times, the blurred framework of etiquette and the permissibility of much that was not allowed before. The piquancy, attractiveness and secret meaning of many ball games are often completely incomprehensible to a modern person. That is why many (almost all) figures of the cotillion, which was a wonderful entertainment for the guests of the ball in the 19th century, cause bewilderment at best out of habit. Get a cracker, extract a folk costume from it, put it on in a special room and, to the sounds of perky music, portray a “folk” dance - what is it? entertainment know. The 19th century has been studied almost thoroughly, but what about the 15th? What to offer the guest of the historical ball of the Renaissance?

Board for board games, Musée National du Moyen Age, France, late 15th century.

Whatever you say, you can’t do without board games or their analogues. They were popular at all times, they dispersed boredom and the ancient Egyptians, and the Celts, and the Romans, and the Crusaders. Cards, dice, backgammon, chess and checkers come to mind almost immediately, and rightly so. But if we try to dance exactly the way our ancestors danced, shouldn't we try and play exactly the same rules that they played? In this short article, I will give the rules of some games (oh, by no means all!), which were popular in the XIV-XVII centuries and which are easy to organize anywhere and at any time.

As the experience of using this material at CTC events shows, almost all game descriptions are incomplete or do not fully explain all the situations that arise during the game. Before using this or that game in a wide range, I would advise you to first test it on those who wish, find out all the "pitfalls" and make the appropriate amendments and additions to the rules, so that the guests of the ball get the pleasure they deserve, and do not waste time on quarrels and mutual displeasure. We will be grateful for any information about the improvements made and, for our part, over time we will also make the appropriate clarifications.

Card games

Neither the time nor the exact place where playing cards originated is known. The ancient Chinese dictionary Ching Tse Tung, which came into vogue in Europe in 1678, says that the cards were invented in China in 1120. The four suits symbolized the seasons, and the 52 cards symbolized the number of weeks in a year. There is also evidence that the Chinese and Japanese, even before the appearance of paper playing cards, were already playing with cards like cards made of ivory or wood with painted figures, and in medieval Japan there were original playing cards made from mussel shells. They were decorated with drawings depicting flowers, landscapes, everyday scenes. With the help of such cards, it was possible to lay out "solitaire" - the shells were laid out on the table and searched for "doubles" among them. In the 13th century, maps became known in India and Egypt.

Regarding the appearance of maps in Europe, there are several versions. According to one of them, the beginning of playing cards dates back to the 15th century and coincides with the appearance of gypsies in European territory. On the other hand, the well-known cards, according to the Jesuit Menestrier, are attributed to the 14th century, when a little-known painter named Zhikomin Gringoner invented cards for the entertainment of the insane King of France Charles VI (1368-1422), who went down in history under the name of Charles the Mad. The cards were allegedly the only means that calmed the royal patient between bouts of insanity. And during the reign of Charles VII (1422-1461) they were improved and at the same time received their current names.

Nevertheless, this is still a hypothesis that is not supported by other data, and some chroniclers attribute the origin of maps to the 13th century. This assumption has a historical basis, since during the reign of Saint Louis in 1254 a decree was issued prohibiting the card game in France under pain of whipping. An Italian manuscript from 1299 also speaks of the prohibition of playing cards. In 1260, a special workshop of manufacturers and merchants of playing cards was founded in Germany. The Order of Calatrava in 1331 banned the game of cards in Spain, and this prohibition was repeated in 1387 by John I, King of Castile. The existence of cards in Castile under King Alfonso XI is evidenced by his decree in 1332, prohibiting card games. It is also believed that playing cards were brought to Europe by the Saracens. In the chronicle of an Italian city for the year 1379, it appears: “... a game of cards was introduced in Viterbo, originating from the country of the Saracens and called by them naib.” Muslims of the East, Arabs, were called Saracens. However, on those maps it is unlikely that human figures were drawn, as they are now, since the law of Mohammed forbids the faithful from making such images. It is possible that Italy is the birthplace of cards with a modern type of pattern. Their oldest copy, engraved on copper, dates back to 1485.

Maps of the modern look did not immediately win universal recognition. In different countries for a long time they had their own distinctive features. Instead of suits, bowls, coins, swords, and sticks were depicted.

Hand-painted Arabic maps of the late 15th - early 16th centuries. (coins, cups, sticks and swords)
Changing card suits in different card systems (left to right: Arabic, Spanish, Italian, German and French)

Special cards were in Germany. In addition to the king, queen and jack, there was a knight. A complete deck of cards in Germany contained not 52, but 64 cards, among which were trump cards: the devil, death, etc. The suits of the Germans also had some differences from the generally recognized (French). Hearts had a modern shape, peaks (vini) were drawn in the form of green leaves on the bushes and were called green. Tambourines were depicted in the form of bells and were called bells. Acorns (clubs) indicate a possible Polish influence in the borrowing of German cards depicting clubs in the form of acorns. Modern drawings of suits, adopted in France, were borrowed from oriental ornamentalism. These drawings come from ancient times and have religious and magical significance.

Modern traditional playing cards

For a better understanding, I will allow myself to explain the terms that are used when describing games:

• Bribe, trick, (trick - tracing paper from English :), set- one laying out of cards (one player lays out a card, the second lays out, etc., until someone wins a trick);
• Round, surrender- a sequence of tricks from the first to the last, until all the cards in hand are played (unlike our, say, "Fool", earlier during the game the cards were often not taken from the pack of the remaining ones continuously; first one round was played, then the points were counted or cards interfered, and only after that they took the next ones);
• The game- a sequence of rounds until one of the players wins, determined by the rules of the game.

Unknown artist, Card Players.
Picture from the archives of the Shakespeare Library.

All fours back to index

The cards are shuffled and each player is given 6 cards. The players look at the cards, then the dealer removes the top card from the flipped deck - this will be the trump card. The second player has the right to agree or disagree with this.

• If he agrees, then the game begins.
• If he agrees, but the top card is a jack, then the game begins, but the dealer receives 1 point.
• If he does not agree, the dealer has the right to still appoint this card as a trump card or also refuse it. If he chooses it as a trump card against the wishes of the second player, the second receives 1 point. If the trump was not recognized, the top cards from the deck are removed until a card of a different suit than the one rejected appears. This card becomes a trump card, regardless of the desire of the players.

The player who was not the dealer starts the game. Each next trick is started by the player who won the previous one. The highest card is an ace, the lowest is a deuce. The highest card wins the trick. Players must lay out cards of the same suit as long as possible. If a player does not have a card of the starting suit (the one laid out by the first starting round), he can play with a trump card. If there is no trump card - any other.

Let me explain with an example: player A lays out the seven of spades. Player B only has a triple of spades. He has to post it. In this deal, player A wins and takes the cards for himself (folds nearby, but does not remove far). The trick is over. The next card is dealt by player A.

Player A again lays out the card of spades - ten. Player B no longer has a spade, but has a trump card. He lays out a trump card, any trump card beats any other, so this change is won by player B and takes his cards. The trick is over. Player B plays the next card.

Player B lays out, say, the queen of hearts. Player A has neither hearts nor trump cards. Then he lays out the eight of clubs and thus transfers the move back to player B. He must deal with the eight of clubs according to the original rules - answer with any club card, trump card, or card of another suit if there are neither clubs nor trump cards - and so on until until someone wins the trick.

The round continues until the players' hands run out of the 6 cards originally dealt. After that, everyone lays out the cards taken during the round and the points are calculated according to the following rules:

• Points for determining the trump card (see above);
• 1 point for using the highest trump per round (that is, the highest trump of the 12 cards involved in the deal);
• 1 point for using the lowest trump per round;
• 1 point for the highest number of card points.

Card points are calculated as follows:

• 4 points for each ace
• 3 points for each king
• 2 points for each lady
• 1 point for each jack
• 10 points for every ten

Please note that points are calculated not only for beaten cards, but for all cards set aside by the results of the round. Cards from two to nine do not bring points.

After one round (one deal) is played, the next one is played, the dealers change. The first player to score 49 points wins.

Alouette back to contents

Option for 2 players

Two are playing. A deck of 48 cards (a regular deck of 52 cards minus tens).

The cards get in the way, the dealer gives each of the players 9 cards face down. The remaining cards are set aside. There are no goats. The highest card is the king, the lowest is the ace (one).

One set consists of players laying out one card each. The player who laid out the highest card (excluding suit) wins. If the cards are equal, they are set aside and the next trick is played. The player who wins it wins both sets - the previous one and this one. If the "tie" falls on the last set, the winner is the player who won the first set in that round. The round ends when the players lay out the last of 9 cards. Whoever wins the most sets wins the round. After that, the cards get in the way again and are dealt. The game is won by the first player to win 12 rounds.

Option for 4 players

The rules are the same, two teams play. Players of the same team sit diagonally apart from each other. The first set is started by the player to the left of the dealer. One set consists of players laying out one card each. The player who laid out the highest card (excluding suit) wins. If the cards are equal, they are set aside and the next trick is played. The player who wins it wins both sets - the previous one and this one. If the "tie" falls on the last set, the winner is the player who won the first set in that round. The round ends when the players lay out the last of 9 cards. The team whose player wins more sets wins the round. After that, the cards get in the way again and are dealt. The dealer is the player sitting to the left of the first dealer. The first team to win 12 rounds wins.

Âs Nas back to index

Persian card game for 5 people and a special deck of 25 cards of five suits (5 cards of each suit), probably the ancestor of some types of poker.

The highest card is "Âs" (ace, ace), or "Shîr vaKhurshíd", which gave the name to the game - it is a lion and a sun. The other four suits are "Padishah" (King), also called "Shâh" or "Pishâ", "Bibi" (Queen), "Sarbâs" (Soldier), and "Lakkat" (Dancer). Sometimes the last card looked different and was called "Kouli" - the hunter. Within the same "suit" the cards did not differ, the suits were painted in different colors to facilitate identification.

If there is no special deck for this game, you can make it from a regular deck: set aside five cards of each suit (one (ace), two, three, four, five) as four suits, and take as the fifth suit, for example, kings each suit and a joker (for example, take the king of hearts for a unit, the king of clubs for a two, the king of tambourines for a three, the king of spades for a four and the joker for a five).

The cards are shuffled and each of the five players is given two cards. Each of the players, starting with the one sitting to the left of the dealer, makes a bet or skips a move. Each of those remaining in the game takes two more cards. They again make bets in the same order or skip the move (thus, those who skipped the move for the first time and those who miss it now have already dropped out of the game). Each of the remaining players takes the fifth, last, card. All remaining players reveal their cards and the one with the best set of cards takes all bets.

The price of the drawn cards (starting from the highest):

• Five cards of the same suit (five "kings", five hearts, five diamonds, etc.);
• Five cards of the same value (five fives, five threes, etc.);
• Four cards of the same value;
• Three cards of one rank and two of another (full house);
• Three cards of the same value;
• Two cards of the same rank.

Basset back to contents

Gambling for any number of players. It probably appeared in the middle of the 15th century in Italy.

The number of cards is determined by the number of participating players according to the following principle:

• 1 standard deck of 52 cards for 2-3 players and dealer;
• 2 decks for 4-7 players and a dealer;
• 3 - 8-11 players and dealer;
• 4 - 12-15 and dealer;
• 5 - 16-19 and dealer, etc. One deck should be added for every four new players.

The dealer deals 13 cards face up to each player. The dealer does not take cards. Then each player decides which of his cards he will bet on. He can bet on any card or on all cards at once. The size of the bet is not limited and not regulated (but it may be limited by the rules of the gambling establishment or the mutual agreement of the players). The bet is made as follows: the player puts money on the card he has chosen. Each player must place his bet before the dealer begins to reveal his cards.

The dealer then reveals the top card, which was face down on the pile of remaining cards.

The dealer wins all bets placed on cards of the same value as the open one.

After that, the dealer removes the next two cards. He wins all bets placed on cards of the same value as the first withdrawn card and pays all bets placed on cards of the same value as the second withdrawn card. After accounting for all wins and losses, he draws the next two cards, then the next, and so on. in the same way. Cards whose bets have been lost are eliminated from the game.

If the player wins the bet, he can either remove the card from the game and take the winnings (initial bet + dealer's payout), or keep both the card and the bet on it (in the original amount). To mark that the winning card and bet are still in play, the corner of the card is folded over. If the card remains in play and loses, the dealer takes the original bet and the card is out of the game.

If the card remains in the game and wins a second time, the bet on it is paid out seven times. A card that wins twice can be removed from the game or left with the original bet size. The second corner of the card is bent. If the card remains in the game for the second time and loses, the dealer takes the original bet and the card is out of the game.

If the card remains in the game and wins a second time, the bet on it is paid out 15 times, and so on. (the third win in a row is paid 30 times, the fourth - 60 times). A card that wins 4 times in a row is out of the game.

School of Lucas van Leyden, The Card Players (c. 1550/59)

Bone-ace back to contents

The game was first mentioned in Florio's The World of Words in 1611. Like the previous one, she is considered one of the ancestors of Black Jack. The game is designed for a standard deck of 52 cards and from two to eight players.

The dealer distributes 3 cards to each of the players - the first two face down, the last face up, while all three cards are dealt at the same time, and not one for each player in a circle.

The game consists of two parts.

Part one (The Bone): the player whose up card gives the most points wins. The winnings - one coin or bets previously agreed upon by the participants - are paid out by each player. If the number of points is equal, the player closest to the dealer clockwise wins. The highest value card is the Ace, and the Ace of Diamonds wins against all cards.

Part Two: All three cards are revealed and the player whose cards are closest to 31 (but no more than 31) wins.

In both parts, points are calculated as follows: ace - 11 points, king, queen, jack and ten - 10 points each, the remaining cards give the number of points according to their value. The winnings are also paid by all players.

Karnöffel back to index

German card game for a deck of 48 cards and four players.

Karnöffel is one of the oldest card games described. The earliest known version of her description dates back to 1426.

In the original, Karnöffel was played with a "German" deck of 48 cards, consisting of cards from two to ten, Jack (Untermann), Knight (Obermann), and King (Köning). The lowest card is a deuce, the highest card is a king. Although it is believed that early versions of the German deck may have included a one (ace), no actual evidence of this has been found. However, after the ace became the highest card of the French deck, the same thing happened with the deuce in the German one. In many later German games, the deuce is considered the highest card. Pay attention to the fact that there is no Queen in the deck. It is curious that the Knight is often confused with the Lady, although the image shows a man.

Since the German deck is not easy to find nowadays, you can play the French deck by removing the aces from it and playing Queens as Knights.

Karnöffel is played in pairs, the players of the same team are located diagonally from each other.

The dealer deals each player five cards at a time (rather than one card at a time), the first card face down, the rest face down. The lowest face-up card (or, if matched, the first face-up card) becomes trump for that round, after which the players take all five cards for themselves.

The player to the left of the dealer lays out a card. Each next player clockwise also lays out one card, the sequence of suits, as in other games, does not matter. The player who laid out the highest card (or the highest trump) wins the hand, puts the cards aside and begins the next hand. The game continues until all cards have been laid out. The team that wins the most out of five deals wins the set. The player who first laid out a card deals cards in the next round. Teammates are not prohibited from consulting each other.

Unlike most other card games, in this one certain trump cards have "special powers" in a number of situations:

• Trump jack: beats all other cards;
• Trump Seven (Devil): beats all other cards except the jack, but only if it was laid out first. Otherwise, it's not the devil, but just a seven. It cannot be laid out in the first deal;
• Six of Trumps (Pop): Beats all cards except those mentioned above;
• Trump Deuce (Kaiser): beats all cards except those mentioned above;
• Trump Three: Doesn't beat the king and none of the above cards
• Trump four: does not beat the king, queen and none of the above cards;
• Trump five: does not beat the king, queen, jack and none of the above cards.

Thirty and one back to the table of contents

The game dates back to at least 1440. This year, Bernadine of Sienne mentioned this game in his anti-gambling guide. The described game, popular in Spain and Ireland, is one of several games that existed in the 15th-17th centuries. and became the progenitors of modern Black Jack.

Any number of players can participate, starting from two. Each player is dealt three cards from a standard 52-card deck, face down, starting with the player to the left of the dealer.

After the deal, the players look at their cards and each player, starting with the same player to the left of the dealer, can throw off one card, put it face up. Instead, he may take the top card from the remaining deck or the previous card from the pile of discarded cards. Players continue to discard one card in a circle and take new ones until one of them hits the table twice. After that, everyone except the knocker must discard one more card for the last time, and then the cards are revealed. The player who has three cards of the same suit in his hand, giving the closest number of points to 31 (but not more than 31), wins. The one who scores exactly 31 points wins automatically: he does not have to wait for someone else to knock on the table or knock himself. The cards are shuffled and played in the next round.

Points are calculated as follows: 11 points for an ace, 10 points for a king, a queen, a jack and a ten, 9 for a nine, 8 for an eight, etc. Three cards of the same value, but of different suits, give 30.5 points.

Caravaggio, "Shuler" (c. 1596)

Dice games back to contents

The game of dice has been popular all over the world since early times. There were hundreds of different variations of the game. Here we will consider only those games that do not require anything from the players, except for the actual six-sided, most popular in our time, dice (and, of course, money to place bets).

This game can be played with or without a playing board. The game requires 11 dice. Game for any number of players.

Before the game, you should arrange the bones in a row so that the numbers on the upper faces are visible in the following sequence: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 1, 2, 3 (the second 1 corresponds to 7, 2 - 8, 3 - 9 ).

The first player rolls two dice. After that, he can remove from the row of laid out dice two corresponding to the values ​​he rolled, or one equal to the sum of the values ​​(i.e., if, for example, 3 and 4 are rolled, you can remove either the dice with numbers 3 and 4, or the dice with number 7). After 7,8 and 9 are eliminated, the player rolls only one die. His turn ends if there is not one in the row of remaining bones that could be removed after the last throw. The values ​​on the remaining dice are summed up and the turn passes to another player. The row of dice lines up again, the second player does the same, and so on. until everyone has played.

The winner is the one whose sum of the values ​​of the remaining dice will be less. The losers pay out the winnings according to the difference between their result and the result of the winner (for example, if the first player ended the move with 1 and the second with 9, the second player pays the first eight coins or another amount in accordance with the original bet).

Dice players, from a German manuscript, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Cod. Nr. 3049 (1479)

Such a brilliantly beautiful and nicely designed Ballroom Dancing game for girls! Just a great task awaits the participants today. After all, the best and most talented couple, who dance unforgettably, will have an incredibly important performance. Heroes, of course, know a lot about dance costumes, but today they can’t focus on anything. To perform in such a prestigious hall, they have never had a chance in their fate. Now they are asking for help, as each of them needs to have the most beautiful image, and besides, their two outfits will have to match perfectly with each other. Well, so, maybe someone will be able to provide them with quick and high-quality assistance? The sound and melody in the game is very easy to turn off. At the top of the game screen are two special icons for this. Lots of hairstyle options. We must not forget that it is necessary to select the shade of hair and hairstyle for each of the heroes of this beautiful game. So, why not make one of this talented bar with blonde hair and the other with darker hair? Or should they both be given the same hair color?

There will be something to break your head. This performance is so important that the dancers should not look ridiculous in front of other couples. They will be obliged to give a great mood to people, but at the same time, each of the heroes of the game should shine, and not make you laugh. After all, this is not a circus and these beautiful dancers are not clowns at all. Their talent has a completely different coloring. The choice of dresses for the girl is striking in its diversity, as well as a huge number of outfits for performances in the wardrobe of the hero of this glorious game. By the way, by dragging a beautiful scarlet rose to the bottom or up, after selecting a category, it is possible to view the full costume options. In this game, everything is extremely easy! All you need to control is a computer mouse. The game screen flickers all over, making the whole entertainment process even more enjoyable.

Everyone knows that the outfits for the performance of real dancers look very beautiful, and when it comes to ballroom dancing, the costumes are not only with many interesting elements and look amazingly beautiful, but also very expensive. Thanks to this game, there is an opportunity to admire all this splendor, completely free of charge. Dresses for the heroine of the game will surely please every little girl. Just choosing the right outfit and shoes for him for this queen, you must not forget about the handsome young man from the game of ballroom dancing. Oh, and a huge wardrobe for performances of these two talented personalities! Clothes are just the sea, even if you bathe in the brilliance of these expensive stones. By clicking on the button with the inscription "Done", there is an opportunity to admire the result, and even change the background on which the star dance couple will move in the brilliance of spotlights.