Kille card game: one card, one swap, and do not be lowest

What Kille is, and where it comes from

Kille is Swedish, and it is also the name of the deck: 42 cards, 21 kinds, two of each, no suits, from Blaren, the lowest card, up to the Kuku, the cuckoo, the highest of the fixed ranks. The game we deal is the traditional one played with it, Enkortskille, one-card Kille, also called Byteskille, swap Kille. The Swedish rules site Lyckans Talisman puts its roots in a French gambling game of the 1500s, Coucou. Wikipedia has it mentioned as Campio in a Swedish court record of 1741, the name Kille first documented in 1833, and says Kille is probably short for Harlequin. A Kille deck made in Stockholm in 1897 sits in the Hallwyl Museum, and Wikipedia says two Swedish makers, Öberg and Offason, still print them. Kille is also the Swedish word for a guy, which is why searching for it turns up mostly other things.

Pagat files it in the cuckoo family, the games where you hold a single card and try not to have the lowest, which it says goes back to the 17th century, maybe earlier. Norway has Gnav, Italy has Cucù, and with an ordinary pack the same game is Cuckoo, Chase the Ace or Ranter Go Round, and in the US, Screw Your Neighbor. Know that one and you know the shape of this. The special packs add cards that refuse a swap, and Kille has five, each with its own cry. Two of those cries survive as Swedish sayings: svinhugg går igen, the pig bites back, and gå värdshus förbi, go past the inn.

The rules we follow, and the calls we made

We follow Lyckans Talisman's write-up of Enkortskille, which rests on two Swedish books, Kortoxen from 1949 and Killeboken from 1967. It is the fullest text we found, and Pagat has no Kille rules page. The five refusing cards, their cries and the rank order are the same in every full account we read. Three things are ours. Those books play for money, with buy-backs, so we play for lives: three each in a pot, one gone for the lowest card, and the last seat standing takes a point. We picked how many pots make a match. And we settled the Harlekin, the one card the sources split on.

The Harlekin, the pack's Harlequin, is the card that can be highest or lowest. Killeboken, as Lyckans Talisman prints it, counts one you are dealt as the lowest card. Pagat and English Wikipedia count one you are dealt, or draw from the talon, as the highest, and only make it lowest when it is swapped onto you. We follow Pagat and Wikipedia, we count a high Harlekin level with a Kuku, and two Harlekins that meet in a swap are both high. That is our reading, not the tradition's, and the how-to page says so as well.

One hand, worked through

Four seats, you first to speak and the dealer last. You hold a four and swap it with your neighbour on the left, who was holding a ten. Swaps go face down, so you now hold the ten. Your neighbour, handed your four, wants to be rid of it and asks the next seat, who turns up a Husu, the pig, and says svinhugg går igen. A Husu refuses and strikes the card offered, here your four. Every swap that card made is undone back to the seat that was dealt it, and that seat is struck, which costs it a life at the showdown. That seat is you. You get the four back, the ten returns to the left, and the Husu keeps its place. The dealer has nobody to ask and goes to the talon, draws a six and keeps it. At the showdown two seats lose a life: you, struck, and the dealer, whose six is the lowest card left.

Two things in that hand catch people out. The pig can cost a life to a seat that never asked it anything, because it looks back along the chain of swaps. And the dealer is always last, with nobody to swap with, so the dealer's swap is with the talon, the cards nobody was dealt.

How lucky Kille is, and how long a match lasts

Mostly luck, and you should hear that before you sit down. In our simulated six-seat pots, a seat that swapped a two or lower, a four or lower, a six or lower or an eight or lower won between 15 and 18 percent of them, against a fair share of 16.7. One that swapped everything short of a matador won about 8 percent. That is twenty-four thousand pots for each setting, played through the game's own rules, with the other five seats swapping a six or lower. Our view, and ours rather than the books', is that Kille is a game to play for the swings and the cries, not for strategy.

A match is a set number of pots, and the number is ours. At the standard length it is twelve pots for two seats, six for four, three for seven or eight. Short is about half of that and long about one and a half times. Our estimate, from simulated matches, is half an hour to forty-five minutes among people at standard. A tie for most points is settled by one more pot between the tied seats.

What the table does, and what it does not

Make a table, pass the link round, and two to eight of you can sit down, every seat for itself. The host chooses the number, and the table opens on four seats; if fewer turn up, the host can start short-handed. There is chat while you play, and voice if the host switches it on. A table with someone at it stays open for 48 hours after the last move, and this page lists the tables your browser is sitting at. You install nothing and sign in nowhere. A seat that runs out of lives watches until the next pot, and the board tells it so.

The pack comes with the table. All 42 cards are dealt for you, in a deck drawn for this table, with a number or a short name in each corner so you can read your hand at a glance. We mean to deal every game that a pack or two of cards can play, and this one comes with a pack of its own. The server does the shuffle and sends your browser only your own card, plus any card the rules turn face up, and the cards of the talon are never sent to anyone.

Or play the computer. You take a seat against one, two or three computers, three by default, and the choice is remembered on your device. The computers see only their own card and what everyone can see, and each moves about every second and a half. Their rule is short enough to state. A computer stands on any of the five refusing cards and on a high Harlekin, never swaps them away, and swaps a low Harlekin and anything else that is a six or lower. In a game this lucky it does not need to be cleverer.

The board tells each hand as it goes, in words: the swaps, the refusals, the strikes, the dealer's trip to the talon and, at the showdown, why each seat lost a life. Your own card comes with its power, and a legend of all 21 cards, lowest first, is a tap away. There is no money here, so no stakes, no buy-back and no selling your card, and we leave out the Swedish house rules. We do not deal the other games played with a Kille deck, Femkortskille, five-card Kille, and Krypkille among them. Playing is free. An ad may turn up now and then, and we aim to keep it discreet.