As a rule the amount of points from each hand is seven, and four or five from the crib.
RANTER GO ROUND.
No game that we can mention surpasses the popular one of Ranter Go Round for real interest and excitement. It is said to have been first played in Cornwall, but to us it signifies very little whether it originated at Land's End or at John o' Groat's; the matter of the greatest interest is that it is a first-rate game for a winter evening. First of all, each player is provided with three counters, or lives, as they are called, and the object of the game consists in trying to see which player will succeed in keeping his lives the longest.
An ordinary pack of fifty-two cards is then shuffled, and dealt out one by one to each player.
The players look at their cards, and the one on the left of the dealer, if he thinks his card is too low, has the option of changing with his left-hand neighbour, who again may change with his left-hand neighbour, and so on till the dealer gets the low card, and as he has no one with whom he can exchange he is allowed to take for it the top card of the pack. The players then turn their cards face upwards on the table, and the possessor of the lowest card, aces being counted lowest, has to forfeit one of his lives.
The game thus goes on until all the players are out but one, who is declared the winner.
If a player's card be demanded by his right-hand neighbour, whose card is higher than the one he gave in exchange, he stands, or, in other words, refuses to change with his left-hand neighbour, knowing that he is safe for that round, because at any rate one card lower than his own is out. If two players have cards of the same value, and these cards are lowest, the player who turned his up last has to lose a life.
Players begin turning up their cards from the one on the left of the dealer No player may exchange more than once.
Sometimes a rule is enforced that when a player demands to exchange with his left-hand neighbour, and gets a card with one, two, or three pips given him for his own, the player with whom he exchanged, if he has got a higher card for his one, two, or three, cries out the value of the card he exchanged, so that the other players may know its worth.