Nine Cards Down?

It was Anne's birthday, and we were out in the back patio of a relative, when one of her cousins out of the blue picked up the deck of cards that was sitting there and asked, "Have you ever played Nine Cards Down?"

Oddly, no.  In my nearly 50 years of gaming and collecting rules of games and game history notes, I had never heard of that one.  I know that each family has a serious card player or two with a favorite game, but the list of common games is really quite small.  We play 500 Rummy and Gin Rummy, and Anne used to play Canasta with some friends.  I have seen some cribbage boards sitting on tables or counters in several houses in the pandemic year.  Then there are Hearts and Spades.  And Solitaire, but again, almost everyone plays the Klondike style even though there are a few dozen others available.  Let's just skip Poker, just no.  And that's just about it for household card games.  Nevermind all the apps.  I mean real cards.

Here is a shot of our game, on a somewhat psychedelic granite tabletop.  It was quite dark at the time but this one photo actually came out ...

When I got home, a quick search said the actual name was "Nine Card Golf".  Frankly, I like "Nine Cards Down" better.  The only thing "golf" about it is that you play for a low score.  Meh.

So, you start by dealing 9 cards to each player, and the players just make a 3x3 grid of cards without ever looking at them.

It looks like the scoring has some variation.  Generally, A = 1, 2-J= face value, Q = 15 and K = 0.  We played with jokers with a joker counting -5, though I saw a variant where they either count -2 or are not used at all.

One the first turn, each player flips over two of their cards.

After that, the turns are simple: pick a card from the deck or the top of the discard pile, use it to replace any of your cards, and discard the replaced card.  You do not get to look at a face-down card before replacing it.  Or discard the new card if you don't want it.  If you get three matching cards in a column, you can remove those -- they count as zero.  That's pretty much it.  As soon as someone shows their last card, other players get one last round to make their own plays, then score the hand.  A series of hands would be played until someone hits 100 or 200. 

There is some strategy, although it really comes down to the luck of the draw.  Replace cards with lower-scoring cards and try to get those matching columns.  When you replace a face-down card, it can be funny when it turns out to be a better card than the one you got stuck with, or it's just the card the next player needed for their pattern.

That's about it.  A fun diversion.  I don't think one deck is enough for 3 people, because after the deck ran out and we shuffled it, the deck was pretty much just junk cards nobody wanted the first time around.  Maybe one deck would work with two players, but it feels like two decks will be better in any case.

Here is a video tutorial

Variants:

Different sites say you start with one card turned up, or three.  We played with two which seemed fine.

On this site, they say you can match 3 in any direction (vertical, diagonal, horizontal).

Here is a domain named after the game, with a friendly family retrospective including who they learned it from.  They recommend three decks for 2-4 players.  And they have a bonus score of -25 for a 2x2 block forming a 4-of-a-kind.

And they point to an entire site of different card games in the Golf family.  Check it out here. 

I see a few mentions of an undercut bonus (unknown number of points) if one players goes out but another player ends up with a lower score.  The lady who showed us the game mentioned it, too.  It might make sense for the player with the lowest score gets to subtract the points of the player who goes out, or just get an undercut bonus of -20.

And for an even bigger set of variations, check out the Wikipedia page.

What an interesting diversion that was.