Soccer: The Great New Card Game

Interesting card game that marries Poker to a team-building football game. There are 54 cards in four 'suits' of eleven and ten reserve cards. The 'suits' are four football teams - Red Rovers, Blue Devils, Green Goblins and Yellow Dwarfs. A team consists of 1 Goalkeeper, 2 Full Backs, 2 Half Backs and 5 Forwards.

Each player receives an equal number of counters. At the start of every hand, a player must pay i unit into the Big Pool (a 'pot' that is taken by the winning player). Everyone then get five cards and can chooseto keep the hand or to discard any number of cards and receive replacements. Once this has been done for everybody, each player may discard the hand or support it. If he does indeed support it, he must pay three units into the Small Pool After everyone has had the chance to discard or support their hand, the hands left in are revealed and the winning player takes the Small Pool. The hands are valued as in Poker, except that it is possible to have five of a kind.

The winning player of each hand may take from his winning hand any cards that he might be needing to form his team. For example, if he was collecting red players and he won the hand with cards Red Full Back x 2 and a red forward, he may take those three cards and lay them out in front of him. When any player has all 11 players of the same colour, he has won. Reserve team players can be in the team, substituting for actual red player cards.

If you run out of units, you are out of the game. The player who first builds a complete team wins and takes the units in the Big Pool. The units seem only to be interesting if you are playing for real money. If not, their only function is to remove a player from the game should that player lose all his units.