Verish' Ne Verish'

The name of this game means "Trust - don't trust". It is the Russian equivalent of Bullshit, contributed by Leo Broukhis.

Number of players: - 2-6, rarely more.

Deck: - a standard 52 card deck for 3-4 players or more; a shortened deck (36 cards - 6 to A) may be used for 2 or 3 players, as it is hard to hold more than 18 cards.

Dealing: - after the deck has been shuffled, one card is picked at random and put away face down; all remaining cards are distributed clockwise one at a time among the players face down. The player to make the first move is the one who has the first card dealt.

Goal: - to get rid of one's cards.

Course of play: - a game consists of several rounds, and each round consists of several moves.

The player to make the first move in a round puts one, two or three of his cards on the table face down and names a rank (not necessarily the rank of the card(s) he just put on the table). For each subsequent move there are two possibilities:

1. The player to make the move (B) has the right to say "I don't trust" and expose the card(s) the previous player (A) put on the table. If the card(s) played by A are not all of the rank that A said, A picks up all the cards on the table and adds them to his hand, the current round terminates, and B starts the next round. If the card(s) played by A were all of the stated rank, then B picks up all the cards on the table, the round terminates, and the next round is started by C, the next player clockwise from B.
2. If B decides not to expose A's play, he says "I trust" (or says nothing, because "I trust" is assumed if nothing is said) and puts one, two or three of his cards on top of the pile of cards already on the table, repeating aloud the same rank which was said by the previous player.

At the end of each round, whoever picked up the cards may remove all groups of 4 cards of the same rank, if any, from his hand, show them to other players and put them away. Note that the rules don't force a player to throw away all groups of four equal cards, but experience shows that this is best done as soon as possible. This is the only case when the number of cards in play decreases.

A player who gets rid of all his cards either by making a move with his last cards, which the next player does not expose, or by being able to throw away all his cards in sets of four at the end of a round, does not participate in the current game any more.

Since one card was put aside at the start of the game, the other three cards of this rank remain in the game until the end. The loser is the last player who is left holding one or more of these cards when everyone else has run out of cards.