When I was a kid (in the 1980s), I used to play a card game (with a regular deck of playing cards) called “Up and Down.” I can’t find anyone in the family who remembers how to play it. But since I was pretty young, it wouldn’t have been too complicated (but not a terribly simple game like War either.)
I tried finding it online, but no luck. There’s a game called “Up and down the river/creek” (or similar titles), but it really doesn’t look right (and it’s from Australia, so it’s unlikely to have been what I remember.)
I think Sage_Rat has hit on it, it sounds like one of the many different names for Oh Hell (which my family termed a slightly earthier title). One of its names is “Up and down whist,” based on the nature of game play.
It’s a game with a huge amount of variations available. You can keep it fun and simple for family play and you can also toughen it up so that it becomes an interesting strategic game that better card players will enjoy.
Oh Hell is a favorite game among my group of card-playing friends. We like it because it requires strategy but also has a not-small element of plain dumb luck.
You know, it seems that as long as you maintain the game’s central tenet - make your bid on the nose - you can make up whatever other rules you want and make a good game of it. You probably can’t find any two disparate Oh Hell players who play by exactly the same rules.
Yeah, I think the “up and down” rules (or “down and up” or something like “up, down and up again” or other similar rules) are the most commonly used elements of Oh Hell (besides making your bid exactly). But there are variations where the full deck is used in every hand. And other variations regarding bidding processes or determining trumps and even others where players pass a bunch of cards a la hearts.
I’ve spent entirely too much time thinking about my favorite way to play this game.
When we played with a really large group (sometimes close to a dozen) at workplace lunch, we created double-deck and even triple-deck versions of this game. It really added a layer of fun/complexity to it.
I prefer using the full deck in every hand, too, but the classic family friendly game is to start with dealing all the cards and then dealing one less card in each ensuing hand until you reach a single card. Then you start back up the ladder by adding a card until you’ve reached the max again. Or versey vicey, start with one card and go up first. Hence the “up and down” nomenclature .
Easy for kids to play and there’s virtually no limit to the number of players because you can just do what maserschmidt suggested and add more cards.
One thing I’d note here: in our double-deck rules, the appearance of the same card in a trick canceled both cards. That’s where lots of the complexity came in.
Yes, that’s the point of the game. With five players, it’s 10 cards in hand 1, 9 cards in hand 2, etc. But you use the entire deck when dealing each hand, correct?
Correct you use the whole deck, you just deal fewer of the cards on most of the hands.
But, as noted earlier, some of us like to play with the full deck in use on every hand. It’s a little more strategic like its cousin spades. The weird version that I like is with five players and five suits (they make decks with more than four suits) with everyone getting a full 13 cards every hand.
Five handed games are personally appealing to me, probably a throwback to my dorm years. They’re not everyone’s cup of tea.
I JUST learned “Up and Down” about a month ago. I would like to teach it to some friends and tried to find the rules on the internet (mainly about the scoring), but no luck. The game I learned used 1 deck of cards. 7 cards were passed out to each player in the first hand and then with each hand thereafter, 1 less card per player. After the cards are passed out, turn up one card from the remaining deck. This card determines trump. Each player bids based on their hand. I could go on…but first, does this sound familiar?
Yeah, that’s a pretty typical version, with the count of cards going back up again to 7 (in your example) after getting as low as one.
There are many ways to score. The simplest I’ve seen (which we don’t use) is
+1 point for every trick you take
on top of that, +10 points if you make exactly what you bid
no negative values
[our scoring, if anyone is interested, is
minus value of your bid if you miss (no points for tricks taken)
if you make your bid exactly, 1 pt for each trick, + 5 pts, unless it’s a zero bid, in which case +3 points for a zero bid made, -1 point for a zero bid missed]