Crates is a form of Crazy Eights, played with a normal 52-card deck, with enough extra rules to be amusing. Like most Eights-type games, it is somewhat reminiscent of the commercial game Uno. It was invented in the 1970s in Cambridge, Massachusetts by some technical workers, to be played during lunch hour.
Crates is normally played by four players, playing in two partnerships, but there are variants playable by from two to five players, which will be described at the end, along with some other variant rules. In the four-player game, partners sit opposite one another.
The Crates deck is a normal 52-card deck, with no relative ranking of suits or numbers. In one variant, the Kings and Queens are removed from the deck to decrease the size of the deck and increase the proportion of special cards.
In the scoring phase of the game, each card is assigned a number of points. This assignment may be summarized as follows:
Card Score
A 1
2 20
3 see scoring.
4 15
5 30
6 30
7 20
8 50
9 30
10 25
J 10
Q 10
K 10
A game of crates consists of 15 hands. In the first hand, each player is dealt 8 cards; in the second hand, 7 cards, and so on until the eighth hand, in which each player is dealt 1 card. On the next, ninth hand, each player is dealt 2 cards; on the tenth hand 3 cards, and so on until the fifteenth hand, in which each player is dealt 8 cards.
The deal begins with any player, and rotates to the left thereafter. When all cards have been dealt, the dealer places the deck of remaining cards on the table, turns up the top card of the deck, and places it next to the deck, to start the discard pile.
The goal of Crates is to win by being the player with the fewest total points accumulated during the game.
At any moment during the play, there is a current suit, a current rank, and a current direction of play. The current suit is the suit of the top card of the discard pile unless that card is an 8 or a 9, in which case the current suit is the suit chosen by the player who played the 8 or 9. The current rank is always the rank of the top card of the discard pile. On each hand, the initial direction of play is clockwise.
The card turned over by the dealer to create the discard pile is treated as if it had been played by the dealer in the ordinary course of play, except that, if it is an 8 or a 9, the dealer must choose a suit before examining his or her hand, and if the turned card is a 9, the suit must be of the same color as the 9.
The general rule of play is that each player must play a card that matches the current suit or the current rank, or play a wild card (an 8 or 9). The only exception to this rule occurs during a 2-sequence. When a player cannot play on the discard pile, that player must draw one card from the deck, and play proceeds to the next player in the current direction.
When a card is played, there may be some further action to be taken before the next player's turn. See the table of card actions for the list of such actions.
When a player has exactly two cards, that player must say "one card" in a clearly audible fashion when playing a card. This applies even if the card played is a 6, which cannot actually leave the player with one card after the turn ends. If the player must make some other announcement (e.g., specify a suit for a wild card, or announce the total of a 2-sequence), "one card" must be said first. A player who fails to say "one card" when required to do so is penalized by having to draw two cards on his or her next turn. If the player does not get another turn in the current hand, the penalty is forgotten.
When one player no longer has any cards, the hand is over, unless a 2-sequence is in progress, in which case the 2-sequence continues until it ends normally, at which time the hand is over, even if every player now has cards.
The following table summarizes the effects of playing a given card on the play of the game:
A: used in a 2-sequence
2: start a 2-sequence
3: none
4: skip the next player
5: Cards for everyone
6: same player plays again
7: next player but one takes a card
8: wild, and change to any suit
9: wild, and change to same-color suit
10: reverse direction of play
J: none
Q: none
K: none
At the end of each hand, players receive points according to the cards remaining in their hands. See the card points table for the point values of the various cards.
At the end of the game (i.e., at the end of the fifteenth hand), the player or partnership with the fewest points wins the game.
The threes are special in scoring. A hand containing only threes counts -50 for each three in the hand. When threes are accompanied by other ranks, they score +3 instead. Also, a three can be used to "cover" any card but an eight. That is, if a hand contains both threes and "eligible cards" (i.e., cards that are not eights), the player may pair a three with an eligible card. The resulting pair is treated as a new eligible card, with score 3. This pairing continues until no bare threes remain. Which eligible cards are paired with threes is up to the player, but it is wise to pair the highest value cards possible.
Scores for all hands are added together, and the winning player or partnership is that player or partnership with the fewest points after the end of the fifteenth hand.
Suppose a player is left with the following cards: A, 2, 3, 3, 6, 8, K. One three should cover the 6, and the other should cover the 2, since these are the highest-scoring eligible cards. The total score would then be 50 + 10 + 3 + 3 + 1 = 67 points
Suppose a player is left with just 3, 3, 8. The threes are themselves eligible cards, so one of them covers the other, resulting in a score of 53.
When a player must draw a card, but the deck is exhausted, that player (or that player's partnership) is given a "pressure". The player must then shuffle all the played cards except the last and stack them face down to make a new deck from which they will draw. The first pressure a player or partnership receives counts 5 points, and each one thereafter counts double the value of the previous one. Pressures are accumulated throughout the game, but scored in the round in which they occur.
For example, if a partnership gets the first pressure of the game on hand 2, then two pressures on hand 3, the first pressure adds 5 points to the score for hand 2, while the second and third pressures add 10 + 20 = 30 points to the score for hand 3. The next pressure for that partnership will be worth 40 points.
The rules for two-player, three-player, and five-player Crates are almost the same as those for the four-player game. The most obvious difference is that there are no partnerships, so scores and pressures are tallied individually. In addition, in the two-player and three-player games, the actions of certain cards are changed as follows:
7: next player takes a card
J: previous player takes a card
Some players also prefer to remove the queens and kings from the pack in the two-player or three-player game, in order to produce more pressures.
(Thanks to Sunshine, of Philadelphia, for these rules) This is another two-player Crates variant. It is played with three hands, one of which is played by a dummy player, known conventionally as "Figgy" (or, more formally, "Fighdij"), whose hand is visible to both other players.
The rules are generally those of three-handed Crates, with some modifications: