Pochspiel
Pochspiel Rulebook
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Components
The components differ by product number:
- Art. 10400: 1 game board (Spielbrett).
- Art. 10450: 1 game board (Spielbrett), 1 Skat sheet (Skat-Blatt) and 100 chips (Spielchips).
The rules below use a 32-card Skat pack (Skat-Blatt); the Joker is removed from it before dealing.
Players: 2 to 8
Ages: 10 to 99
Playing time: depends on the number of players
Board
The board has nine plates (Mulden). One plate lies in the middle; this is the winning plate (Gewinnmulde). The outer plates are marked with card pictures as follows: Ace, King and Queen (Mariage), Jack, Queen, King, Seven Eight and Nine (Sequence), Joker (Pocher) and Ten.
Setup
The 100 chips are divided equally among the players; any remaining chips are taken out of the game.
Remove the Joker from the pack. The remaining 32 cards are used.
- With 2 to 4 players, each player receives 8 cards.
- With more than 4 players, each player receives proportionally fewer cards. For example, with 8 players each player receives only 4 cards.
Game Flow
The game is played in three phases.
Phase 1: Collecting Trumps
At the start of a round, each player puts one chip into each of the nine plates.
The dealer shuffles the cards and deals them to each player. The dealer turns over his top card. The suit shown on this card is the trump suit for this round.
Each player now shows his hand and checks whether he holds cards or combinations in the trump suit, as pictured on the board: that is, Seven, Eight or Nine (Sequence), Ten, Jack, Queen, King, Ace, or Queen/King (Mariage). If a player holds one or more of these cards or combinations, he shows them to the other players. He may then take the chips from the corresponding plate or plates and add them to his supply.
Chips that are not taken stay on the board for the next round. The cards then return to the players' hands.
Phase 2: Pochen (Bidding)
The player to the left of the dealer (Vorhand) begins Pochen. He bids a number of chips, for example 3, and pays them into the plate in the middle of the Poch board.
Any player who believes he has a better Poch (combination) may outbid by bidding 4 or more chips and paying them into the middle plate. A player may also hold the bid of Vorhand, which means paying the same number of chips into the middle plate, or he may pass and drop out of this part of the game.
Bidding continues clockwise until the dealer, as the last player, has held, outbid or passed.
Poch combinations are pairs, threes or fours, that is, two, three or four cards of one rank. The number comes before the rank: four Eights are more than three Queens. If the number is equal, the rank decides: three Kings are more than three Tens. The Ace is the highest card.
If two players have a pair of the same rank, for example two Jacks, the pair with the trump Jack wins. The player with the best cards takes the chips from the middle plate and also the chips from the plate marked Joker. The cards stay with the players.
At the end of Pochen, each player shows his best card combination.
Phase 3: Playing Out (Ausspielen)
The winner of the Pochen round (Pochen) begins to lay down cards. The following rules apply:
- Play begins either with a Seven, then continues upward with Eight, Nine and so on; or downward, beginning with an Ace, then King, Queen and so on.
- Within a suit, cards are laid down in the chosen order until that suit is complete.
- If the winner of the Pochen round has no Seven or Ace, the next player clockwise begins.
- The player who lays down the last card of a suit may choose the next suit.
- The direction chosen (upward or downward) must be kept until the end of the game.
After each round of play, every player pays one chip into each plate. A new round begins.
End of the Game
The game continues until one player has no chips left. The winner is the player who has the most chips at that point.
The first player to have no cards left wins and receives from each other player as many chips as that player still holds cards in hand.
We wish you lots of fun playing Pochen!