Beanie clarification...

[Mark]

An average of 6.3 points per hand. That'll take some repeating. I guess you must have had lots of leftover twos then.

[Feek]

Nope, I won most of the hands

[Mark]

I meant the hands you didn't win, but if you won most then that's even better.

[Kell_ee001]

Originally Posted by Feek

We're not the only ones, I've googled it and found a few variations on the rules, an odd one being that if you want a card from the discard pile, you have to take the whole pile!

I've played that way before.

Still can't remember what we called it, if we called it something other to Rummy anyway

And Jamie after laughing at me, first link when I google searched states....

Scoring:
The person who beanies gets no score.
cards ace-nine count for 5 points
cards ten-king count for ten points
Beanie card = 25 points, so don't hold onto them unnecessarily.

[Feek]

I'm working on writing down some rules, it's a bit of a mishmash at the moment but my sister has asked for the rules after we talked about it at the weekend.

Input welcome....... (Welsh confirmation would be good!)

Beanie is a Rummy type card game played by up to six people. The objective is to discard of all the cards in your hand before other players.

This is done by laying down cards in piles, either as sets of numbers or as same-suit runs. Cards can be laid on your own pile or on other players piles providing you have first made a pile of your own.

To determine who makes the first deal, a single card is dealt to all players face up. The player with the highest card is the initial dealer. If two or more players share the same high card value, they are dealt second cards and the player with the highest card is the initial dealer. Aces are considered high.

Each player is dealt seven cards except the player to the left of the dealer who is dealt eight cards. The remaining cards are left in the centre of the table, face down as the main stack.

The first player makes their move by either laying down a pile consisting of sets of numbers (example: three Sixes) and/or a same suit run (example: Five, Six and Seven of Hearts) and then putting one card into a discard pile in the centre of the table. A pile must consist of three or more cards.

Play continues by the second player first picking up a card either from the main stack or from the top of the discard pile, playing their hand as above and then the turn finishes by placing a card on the discard pile. If a player chooses to take a card from the top of the discard pile at the start of their turn, they must use that card immediately.

Once you have placed cards in front of yourself in your own pile, you are then allowed to play with other peoples piles. For example if a player has a pile consisting of the Five, Six and Seven of Hearts and you have the Eight of Hearts, you can put that card onto their pile but if you don’t have a pile in front of yourself then you can not do this.

Runs using Aces can take the Ace as either high or low, but the run can not use the Ace as both high and low – A run can be Ace, Two, Three or Queen, King, Ace but not King, Ace, Two.

The kicker to all this is that for each round of dealing, there is a card designated as the ‘beanie’ card. This card is wild and therefore can be used as a replacement for any other card. During the first round the beanie card is the Ace, for the second round it’s the Two, third round it’s the Three etc all the way to the final round where the beanie card is the King.

When using a beanie card, for example in the first round a player may lay two Sevens and an Ace, the player should state in a loud clear voice what the beanie card represents “It’s a Seven” or if it’s part of a run such as Three of Hearts, Four of Hearts, Ace of Spades “It’s the Five of Hearts”.

An opposing player may steal a beanie card from another players pile. In the above example if another player has the real Five of Hearts they can put it onto the run of cards and take the Ace of Spades for themselves providing they have already made a pile of their own. A beanie card taken from someone elses pile MUST be played during that turn, it cannot be held for later use. You can not play with yourself; you can’t swap out cards for beanies in your own piles.

Each players turn starts when they pick up a card from either the discard pile or the main stack and ends when they place a card onto the discard pile. Once the card has been put down on the pile they are not permitted to make any more changes if they realise they’ve missed something. Beanie is like Chess where once a turn is over, it’s over and there is no going back.

Play continues until a player has disposed of all cards in their hand (the turn must still end with placing a card on the discard pile). At this point the other players take the value of all the cards remaining in their hands which are added to the score sheet. All cards are valued at face value, Aces and picture cards are worth 10 points and any player who is unlucky enough to have a beanie card in their hand will score 25 points for that card. The score sheet is updated after each round with each players scores for that round added to their previous scores.

The next round then starts with the next value beanie card. It is traditional for the score-keeper to call out which card is the beanie after the deal in the format “Threes are beanies, beanies are threes, threes are beanies”. A few seconds later someone will normally ask “what are beanies this time?”

After thirteen rounds (Aces to Kings) the player with the lowest score is the winner.

If all cards in the main stack are used, the discard pile is removed, shuffled and turned back over to create a new main stack. Play continues.

A player can play what is known as a ‘Big Beanie’. This involves creating a pile in front of them which is a full run of seven cards, all of the same suit (beanie cards are allowed) in one turn. They must start with no piles in front of them and end with one pile of seven cards. The ends the current round and that players score is reduced to zero. All other players are free to insult the owner of the big beanie who will no doubt be sitting with a big smug smile on their face.

[Desmo]

My best score (made at cottaging) was 72. Don't think I'll ever get that low again.

[kaiowas]

Just to point out the differences between Beanie and how I was taught "Benny"

To determine who makes the first deal, a single card is dealt to all players face up. The player with the highest card is the initial dealer. If two or more players share the same high card value, they are dealt second cards and the player with the highest card is the initial dealer. Aces are considered high.

We've always determined the first dealer by dealing cards face up until someone is dealt a black jack. That person deals first.

Each player is dealt seven cards except the player to the left of the dealer who is dealt eight cards.

In our variant the dealer would deal themselves the 8th card.

If a player chooses to take a card from the top of the discard pile at the start of their turn, they must use that card immediately.

As said before we've never played with this restriction

When using a beanie card, for example in the first round a player may lay two Sevens and an Ace, the player should state in a loud clear voice what the beanie card represents “It’s a Seven” or if it’s part of a run such as Three of Hearts, Four of Hearts, Ace of Spades “It’s the Five of Hearts”.

We've never explicitly required this, usually if a beanie has been played as part of a set it's obvious what the beanie represents, when a beanie is played as part of a run the cards will usually be layed out in such a way that it's obvious which card the beanie repesents. It's not unusual for one or more players to ask for clarificatrion of what you've put down though. Main exception to this is when your pile includes multiple beanies as it's often feasible for the pile to represent either a run or a set. At which point we'd usually say something like "That's 3 sevens" rather than explicitly state what the beanies represent.

You can not play with yourself; you can’t swap out cards for beanies in your own piles.

We've never had this restriction.

Aces and picture cards are worth 10 points and any player who is unlucky enough to have a beanie card in their hand will score 25 points for that card.

We score aces as 11

A player can play what is known as a ‘Big Beanie’. This involves creating a pile in front of them which is a full run of seven cards, all of the same suit (beanie cards are allowed).

More of a wording clarification than a rule difference. The big beanie must be layed down in one go. You can't put some of it down on one turn and then add to it later.

An additional rule we play which hasn't been mentioned here is that if the first person to play (the dealer by our rules, left of the dealer in these rules) goes out on their first turn everybody else gets one turn to try and offload as many points as possible. If anybody other than the first person to play goes out on their first turn and you haven't had a go yet then tough luck.

[Davey_Pitch]

Originally Posted by Desmo

My best score (made at cottaging) was 72. Don't think I'll ever get that low again.

I scored 47, though that was thanks to a Big Beanie late in the game. I was getting hammered before that