(Above is the traditional set up for the game Sixty Six)
Card Game Rules
Sixty Six is a trick taking game played with two players and a 24 card deck (9s, 10s, Jacks, Queens, Kings and Aces). The objective of Sixty Six is to win the most points by taking tricks.
For more trick taking games, check out our guides for Pinochle and Euchre.
If you are looking for cards to play Sixty Six with, check out a standard deck here or one of our recent arrivals here.
Card Ranking
In Sixty Six, cards are ranked Aces (high), 10s, Kings, Queens, Jacks, and 9s (low).
Set Up
Before gameplay can begin, a dealer must be selected. To do so, players must choose a random card from a shuffled deck. The player with the lowest card becomes the dealer. Ties are broken with repeated drawings. The dealer shuffles the deck and passes out six cards in groups of three. The top card of the remaining deck is flipped over to establish the trump suit for the game. The remaining deck forms the stock and is placed halfway on top of the trump establishing card.
How to Play
The player opposite of the dealer begins the gameplay by placing a lead card in the center of the circle. The other player must try to out rank the card if possible (factoring in the trump suit). The best card wins the trick for the player and they receive both cards.
The winner of the round takes the top card from the stock and the loser of the round takes the next card. The winner then places the lead card next round.
After the stock runs out and the trump suited card is taken, players must follow the suit of the lead card if possible.
Scoring
Players win points the following ways:
Each Ace won is worth 11 points.
Each 10 won is worth 10 points.
Each King won is worth 4 points
Each Queen won is worth 3 points
Each Jack won is worth 2 points
A King and Queen won in a single trick is worth 20 points
A King and Queen of the trump suit won in a single trick is worth 20 points
The first person to 66 points wins the round. If all of the tricks are played without someone getting 66 points, the winner of the last trick wins the round. The first person to win 7 rounds wins the game.
For more information about Sixty Six and its rules, check out Wikipedia's article here or Pagat's article here.
(Above is a guide to the game Sixty Six)
Looking for more card games to play? Check out this article:
40+ Great Card Games For All Occasions
About the author: John Taylor is a content writer and freelancer through the company Upwork.com. You may view his freelancing profile here. He has a B. A. in English, with a specialty in technical writing, from Texas A&M University and a M. A. in English from the University of Glasgow. You may view his previous articles about card games here and his LinkedIn profile here.
1 comment
teresting game. I’ll bet that it is a German game because it has a lot of similarity to Klabber, a game that we played with my mother’s family and was popular among the German immigrants around Evansville Indiana. The order of the cards from A, 10, K. Q, J, 9 is the same, and the lower cards were discarded. And the points related to the cards is the same, A=11, 10=10, K=4, Q=3, J=2. 9=0. A big difference is that the extra points were awarded for actually holding various combinations (called “melds”) like K&Q of trumps, or 4 of a kind, 4 Js in particular, or three cards in a sequence of a particular suit, in your own cards rather than being caught in the same play. An interesting difference is that in Klabber the order of the cards changes in the trump suit. In the trump suit, the order becomes J, 9, A, 10, K, Q. And the value of the trump cards changes to J=20, 9=14, A=11, 10=10, K=4, and Q=3.
Cards are dealt 3 at a time, with the last card turned over for trump. In Klabber, there is a bidding round were players are allowed to claim they can make more than half the points based on the trump suit. It no player accepts the challenge, then each player gets a chance to claim the trump suit. If no player chooses a trump suit, then the cards are delt again. Klabber can be played between 2 players, but it is far better to play as a group of 4 players with partners playing opposite. I wonder if 66 can be played that way also.
One major difference is that you must follow suit in Klabber, and you must play a higher card if you can. The rule makes it interesting in partner play because you can lead a card, forcing the opponent to play a higher card, and then your partner can capture the whole trick, a common approach to catch both the J and 9 of trumps. The interesting thing to watch is the count at the end of the hand. The partner who collected the tricks plays the cards one at a time, adding the points out loud. The player doing the count plays the card, adding the count without saying what the card is. It is amazing how fast someone can add those points after you get the hang of it. One difference is that the player often starts out with J & 9 are 34 if they got both trump cards. Oh, and there is an extra 10 points for taking the last trick. So a common count starts out with J, 9 and last trick are 44. Of course, they need to ignore the J of trumps if they have already accounted for it. If this doesn’t confuse you, nothing ever will :-)
If I remember correctly, the total number of points during any one hand is something like 360, so the partners claiming the trump suit need to get at least 180 points, or they get “Turkey Tracks”, which is X X X on the score sheet. The nice thing about holding the 4 Js is that you cannot lose because the 4 Js is worth 200 points. The partners with the most points at the end of the game win the match.
There was also a claim that the game was a betting game, with a price per point agreed at the beginning of the match. We never played for money, but they did have Klabber parties with prizes for the partners with the most points and a prize for the partners who got the last meld. The area around Evansville played the game so much that stationary stores sold party score sheets that included how partners moved between tables for a party game.
Sounds a bit like 66?