How to Play Conquian

Objective

Meld eleven cards on the table in sets and runs. You start with ten cards, so winning means melding your whole hand plus one more card from the center. Card historians often point to Conquian, played in Mexico and the American Southwest in the 1800s, as one of the earliest rummy games.

A set is three or four cards of the same rank. A run is three to eight cards of the same suit in sequence.

Setup

Take the 8s, 9s and 10s out of a standard deck, leaving 40 cards: ace through 7, then jack, queen and king in each suit. Choose a dealer. Deal ten cards to each player, one at a time. Place the rest face down as the stock. There is no discard pile at the start.

How to play

The non-dealer starts by turning the top card of the stock face up. From then on, every turn begins with one face-up card in the center: the card your opponent discarded, the card your opponent turned up and passed on, or a card you just turned yourself.

To use the center card, meld it right away, either with cards from your hand or by adding it to one of your melds on the table. You may also lay down other melds from your hand, and you may rearrange your own table cards any way you like, as long as every group still forms a legal set or run. Then discard one card from your hand face up. That card becomes the center card for your opponent.

If you don’t want the center card, turn it face down onto a waste pile and turn up the next card from the stock. You can use that card, or leave it face up and end your turn. Your opponent then gets the chance to use it.

Forcing: if the center card would fit onto one of your existing melds without any help from your hand, your opponent can force you to take it. You must meld it and then discard, even if that spoils your plans.

1. 1Look at the face-up center card
2. 2Meld it at once, then discard one card from your hand
3. 3Or turn it down and flip the next stock card
4. 4Never take a card into your hand

Winning

Conquian has no point count. The hand ends the moment a player has eleven cards melded on the table. Because you must discard after every meld, the winning move uses the center card and every card left in your hand at once, with nothing left over to discard.

If the stock runs out and the last center card goes unused, the hand is a draw. Players usually agree on a fixed stake for each hand, and the winner collects it.

Variations

Spanish deck: in Mexico the game is played with a 40-card Spanish-suited deck (cups, coins, swords and clubs), with ranks 1 to 7 plus the three court cards. The play is the same.

Some Mexican tables deal nine cards and play to ten melded cards, or use a single card, such as the two of coins, as a wild card.

Some tables double the stake for the hand that follows a draw.

Tips from the table

Use forcing as a weapon. If your opponent has three fives on the table and you hold the fourth, discarding it forces them to meld it and then discard, which can break up a hand they were building.

Rearranging is free and often decisive. A run of 3-4-5-6 can lend its 6 to a set of sixes, as long as the 3-4-5 that stays behind is still a legal run.

Cards you turn down go out of play for good. Keep track of them. If two of the kings are face down in the waste, a set of kings is no longer possible for either of you.

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