How to Play Agram

Objective

Win the last trick. Agram has no trumps, no bidding and no points for the cards you capture. The first five tricks only shape the sixth: they decide who leads it and which cards are still in play.

Your job is to keep a card that can take that final trick, and to make your opponents spend their strong cards before it arrives. Many groups play a run of hands and simply count how many each player wins.

Setup

Start with a standard deck and take out every king, queen, jack and 2, plus the ace of spades. That leaves 35 cards. Each suit ranks from ace (high) down to 3. Spades has no ace, so the 10 of spades is the top spade.

Pick a first dealer any way you like. After that, the winner of each hand deals the next one. Deal six cards to each player in two rounds of three. The cards left over stay face down and are not used this hand.

How to play

The player next to the dealer leads any card to the first trick. Each other player then plays one card. You must follow suit if you can. If you have no card of the suit led, you may play any card, but it cannot win, because there are no trumps.

The highest card of the suit led takes the trick, and the winner leads to the next one. Turn finished tricks face down and set them aside. Nobody counts them.

Keep going until all six tricks have been played. Whoever wins the sixth trick wins the hand and deals next.

1. 1Lead any card, or follow suit if you can
2. 2Play any card when you are out of the suit led
3. 3Highest card of the suit led wins and leads next
4. 4Win the sixth trick to win the hand

Winning

There are no card points in Agram. The winner of the last trick wins the hand, and nothing else counts: not how many tricks you took and not which cards you captured along the way.

For a longer session, agree on a target before you start, such as the first player to win five hands, and keep a simple tally.

Variations

Sink-Sink, also from Niger: deal five cards each (three, then two). The winner of the fifth trick takes the hand.

Fapfap, from Cameroon: five cards each, with a bonus for style. Winning the last trick with a 3 pays double, and winning the last two tricks with 3s pays four times the stake.

The Mali version: remove the 2s through 6s and the ace of spades for a 31-card deck. Each suit ranks ace, king, 10, queen, 9, 8, jack, 7. Deal five cards each and play for the fifth trick.

Spar, from Ghana, is built on the same last-trick idea with its own deck and payouts. See our Spar rules for the differences.

Tips from the table

Count the cards. With 35 in the deck and only a few players, some cards never come out of the pack. Watch which aces and 10s have been played so you know when your 9 has become the top card of its suit.

Lead your weak suits early. If you can run an opponent out of a suit, they will have to throw away other cards later, and you are more likely to save your best card for the end.

Remember that only the suit led can win. On the sixth trick the leader has a big edge, so winning the fifth trick often matters as much as holding a high card. A lone card in a suit nobody else holds wins the last trick if you get to lead it.

Frequently asked