If Piquet or Bézique cards are used, i.e., packs with the 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 of each suit omitted—leaving but 32 cards in the set—the ordinary rules are observed. When playing with this smaller pack the hands will apparently be of far [15] greater value than usual. This arises from the fact that all the lower cards of each suit are omitted, and after a few deals it will be found very difficult to make even a small number of tricks with hands which, if a full pack of cards was in use, would be exceptionally good. There being but thirty-two cards to deal with, the number of players must not exceed three, or perhaps four.
SIX- OR SEVEN-CARD NAP.
In this variation six or seven cards are dealt to each player, who, before making his call, has to throw away (face downwards and unexposed) one or two, as the case may be, of his cards, so as to leave the number in his hand five, when the game is played on the regular lines.
NINE-CARD NAP.
This may be described as the last innovation in the game. It is conducted on exactly similar lines to the five card method, except that nine cards are held by each player, none being discarded as in the last mentioned variation, but it has not yet become popular, and in view of the fact that even with only three players more than half the pack is in use, its scope is far more limited than any other variety. In this variation the person calling Nap would have to make all nine tricks, a most difficult and very unfrequent occurrence. It will be found to be a pleasing variety for two players who are of about equal skill at the ordinary game, its possibilities being so different from that method, but we doubt its ever being made as popular as the five card game. [16]
LOO.
¯¯¯¯¯¯
Loo (or, as formerly it was sometimes called, Lue) is a very lively and popular round game, justly described as one of the best and yet one of the simplest known. Indeed, until the introduction of “Nap,” it was the most fashionable of its class in this country. The date of its origin is not on record, but that some amount of antiquity can be claimed for it may be inferred from the fact that a description of the game appears in works published at the beginning of the present century, when the method of playing it was virtually the same as is recognised at the present day, except that then the five-card variation was the most popular, whereas now the three-card game is in vogue.