Haihowak
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Haihowak (Polish name: hejhołek) is a card game played with ordinary playing cards. Haihowak was designed in Poland in 1998. The name comes from the name of fruit juice, that was being drunk during designing its rules.
Official rules of the game are nowadays managed by the Haihowak International Federation.
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Rules of Haihowak
last changes: July 24, 2001
Basic information
Haihowak (Polish name: hejhołek) is a playing card game designed on April 4, 1998 by Paweł Goleniowski and Małgorzata Dulka. Two full packs of cards with 2 jokers each are used (108 cards). Number of players - from two to four. Each player gets 11 cards. Then five cards are placed on board with their front up (these unhidden cards are called "open cards"). The rest of cards lay on the table with their back up (they are called "hidden cards").
Keys
The main and the only arrangement in Haihowak is called "key". In Haihowak there are only two suits called "colours": red suit (hearts ♥ and diamonds ♦) and black suit (spades ♠ and clubs ♣). Key is an arrangement of two or more cards of the same colour with a space of one card between every two neighbour cards. Therefore all cards in key are only even numbers or all cards are only odd numbers. Examples of keys:
- Two of Spades and Four of Spades
- Seven of Diamonds, Nine of Hearts and Jack of Diamonds
- Ten of Clubs, Queen of Clubs and Ace of Spades
- Ace of Diamonds, Three of Hearts, Five of Hearts and Seven of Diamonds
- Jack of Clubs and King of Spades
Ace can be used as One (card lower then Two) or as normal Ace (card higher than King). Joker may substitute every card in key, but number of Jokers in key cannot exceed the half of the total number of cards in this key.
Possible moves
In Haihowak there are three types of moves possible. In single turn player can make as many moves as he want. These are the possible moves:
- To lay out the key If player has in his cards one key or more keys he can put them on the table. After that such keys don't belong to anybody. Every player can use them to make the next types of moves.
- To enlarge the key Player can enlarge the key that is already on the table with any number of cards (of course the key must remain correct).
- To take the key The key that is already on the table can be taken by player when he put another key on it. The second key must have opposite colour (red-black) and all spaces between neighbour cards in old key must be filled (e.g.: There is such key on the table - Three of Hearts, Five of Diamonds and Seven of Hearts. We put on that key another one - Four of Clubs and Six of Spades. After all we have - Three of Hearts, Four of Clubs, Five of Diamonds, Six of Spades and Seven of Hearts). The number of cards we can put to take the key from the table depends on the number of cards that are already in this key on the table. Usually we can put more cards - not only to fill all spaces in old key but also one or two cards on the edge (beginning or end) of that key (if we take more cards than we will score more points). Only when we want to take the key that contains only two cards we have to fill all spaces (it means - only one space!) and also put at least one card on the edge. The possible number of cards we can use to take the key from the table shows the table below:
| number of cards in the key on the table |
number of cards we can use to take that key from the table |
| 2 cards |
2 - 3 |
| 3 cards |
2 - 4 |
| 4 cards |
3 - 5 |
| 5 cards |
4 - 6 |
| 6 cards |
5 - 7 |
| 7 cards |
6 - 7 |
The course of the game
After shuffling the cards all players get 11 cards. The player on the right of the player that dealt out the cards begins the game. During the game the queue of players' turns always goes left. The player during his turn makes as many moves as he want. If he take the key from the table then cards from that key and cards he used to take that key go to his score. After the end of the game that cards are scored as showed in the next part of this text. When player ends his turn he takes from hidden cards as many cards as he needs to have 11 cards again. Before that he can also take only one card from the five open cards, but if he starts taking cards from hidden cards he loses this possibility. If he took one card from open cards he after all has to add there one card from hidden cards (to make five open cards again). When there are no hidden cards then on the end of turn each player takes only one card from open cards. If there are also no more open cards player who wants to end his turn has to say "how-hai". After the end of one's turn, the next player (on one's left) begins his turn.
The end of the game
There are two possibilities of ending the game. The first one is when nobody has any card (very rare situation). The second one is when all players who still have cards say they want to end the game. Player who wants to end the game has to say "hai-how-hai". The game ends when all players (one by one) say so without making any move. If only one player made move in his turn, then the game is not over and to end game other players have to say "hai-how-hai" again (and wait until everybody agree to end the game one by one). After the end of the game players count the cards they have scored (the keys they took from the table and cards they used while taking that keys). The table below shows the number of points per card:
| type of card |
points |
| Two - Five |
1 point |
| Six - Ten |
2 points |
| Jack |
3 points |
| Queen |
4 points |
| King |
5 points |
| Ace, Joker |
3 points |
The player who scored the most points wins the game.
External links
- Information about Haihowak (http://hejholek.servis.pl/english.html)
- Information about Haihowak in Polish (http://hejholek.servis.pl/)pl:hejhołek