How to play Knorri

Knorri in a paragraph

Three to six seats, each playing for themselves, with one ordinary pack, ace high. Friends sit at a table you make, or you sit against two to five computers. The aim is not to be the last one holding cards. Nothing is dealt: nine cards lie face up and the rest is the stock. In the first phase the stock is turned a card at a time, one turn per seat, and each turned card takes cards off the table. In the second you play out what you took, and every card has to beat the one before it, or you pick one up instead. Play your last card and you are safe.

The first phase: turn a card, take a card

The stock is face down and nobody holds a card. In the first hand the first seat, the host's, has the first turn. After that the loser of the last hand deals and the seat after them has it. On your turn the table turns the top card face up. Then one of three things happens, in this order. A smaller card of the same suit on the table? You must take it into your pile with the turned card, and if there are several you choose which. Otherwise, if the turned card is a diamond, it takes a spade or a heart of your choice. Otherwise it stays on the table for the seats after you.

Clubs, spades and hearts never take another suit, and a diamond with a smaller diamond on the table has to take that diamond, not a spade. Say the 5 of hearts and the 9 of spades are out and the 8 of hearts is turned for you: the 5 goes into your pile with it. Turn the 3 of diamonds with no smaller diamond out and it takes the 5 of hearts or the 9 of spades, your pick. You cannot miss a capture here. The table does the turning and the forced captures itself, and stops only when a turned card could take several cards and that seat has to pick one.

When the stock runs out, the last seat that took anything also takes every card still on the table. Now your pile is your hand, and every card in it was seen going in. A seat that took nothing is out before the second phase and cannot lose. If nobody took a card the whole way through, the hand is dealt again.

The second phase: beat it or pick it up

Now you play the cards out, a trick at a time. The top card of a trick is the one played last, and the bottom card is the oldest one still in it. On your turn you either play one card that beats the top card, or you pick up the bottom card into your hand. Nothing has to follow suit. A spade or a heart is beaten by a higher card of its own suit, or by any diamond. A diamond is beaten only by a higher diamond. A club is beaten only by a higher club. You may pick up even when you could beat, and you must when you cannot.

A trick is complete when it holds as many plays as there were seats still in the game when it began. Seats that go out during it do not shorten it. The completed trick is set aside, and whoever played its last card leads any card to start the next. If the only card left in a trick is picked up, the table is empty and the seat after the one who picked up leads.

The holder of the 2 of clubs opens the first trick and must play it. If that hand also holds the 3 of clubs, or the 3 and 4, and so on unbroken from the 2, they can all go down together as one play, but only on that first play. Pagat's example, at four seats, so the trick needs four plays. A plays the 2, 3 and 4 of clubs, which counts as one play. B plays the 7 of clubs and C the jack of clubs, all clubs, because only a higher club beats a club. D cannot beat the jack, or would rather not, and picks up the bottom card, the 2. The trick now holds 3, 4, 7 and jack, but the 3 and 4 went down together, so it counts as three plays of the four it needs. It is A's turn.

Pagat's other example, also at four seats, shows why going out does not shorten a trick. A leads the 8 of hearts. B beats it with the king of hearts and goes out. C picks up the 8. D plays the ace of hearts, and A trumps it with the 5 of diamonds. Three plays are down, but the trick needed four because there were four seats when it began, so it is not complete. It is C's turn, and C must pick up the king or beat the 5 with a higher diamond.

Going out, the loser, and the score

Play your last card and you are out: safe, and skipped from then on. If your last card completes a trick, the next seat leads. The hand ends when only one seat still holds cards, and that seat is the loser. Knorri calls the loser the hörri, and the hörri deals next.

Pagat says nothing about a hand that will not end, and with three or more seats it can happen: the same position comes round again. So the table also ends a hand when a position repeats, or after 1,500 plays and pick-ups. The seats still holding cards are ranked by cards held, fewest first, ties by turn order, which is our call, and score as if they had gone out in that order. Points already earned stand, and the board says why the hand ended.

Points are optional in Pagat's rules and usually not kept. Here they always are, on Pagat's scheme. When you go out you score a point for each other seat still holding cards. A seat that took nothing in the first phase scores a point for each seat that holds cards when the second phase starts. The loser scores minus everyone else's total, so a hand always adds up to zero. At four seats, in the order out, that is plus three, plus two, plus one and minus six.

In a room the host picks one, three or five hands, and at the computer table you do. With more than one hand, each seat's running total sits beside its name. Between hands any seat can press Deal the next hand. The highest total after the last hand wins, and a tie for the top is shared.

What the table does for you, and what it does not

The table keeps the books. It turns the cards and makes every capture that is not a choice. The cards you can legally play stand out, and pressing a dimmed card says which rule stops it. It shows whose turn it is, what just happened, each seat's cards, over several hands its total, and how many plays the trick has against how many it needs. A legend on the board reminds you that diamonds are trumps and clubs are hard.

Other seats' hands show as a number, not as cards, but a log records every capture, play and pick-up: the last few lines show on the board and a fold-out holds the recent ones, and all of the hand at the computer table. Pagat points out that the second phase is in theory a game of complete information, since everyone saw every card go into every pile. Hiding the hands is a courtesy, not a secret: the log makes every hand deducible, and the computers work from that log and the table, never from a hidden hand. Working out who holds what is your job.

What we do not deal: seven or eight seats, soft clubs, where a spade, heart or diamond can also beat a club, the last-card call, and the older first phase Pagat credits to Cristian Seres. Once you are out of a hand you watch the others play it out, and there is no forfeit button. With hands still to come the table waits for a seat that has left, so stay for the next one. If you searched for how to play Knorri as a PDF, there is none to download: this page has the rules, and the staged hand plays them out.