Krypkasino Card Game Rules

Take Casino, keep the fishing, and turn the objective inside out. That is Krypkasino, a Swedish game for 2 to 6 players in which the scoring cards you capture count against you and the lowest total wins.

Swedish has a word for the move you spend the game looking for: krypa, to creep, meaning to lay down a card that captures nothing. You would creep every turn if you could. A card that can capture has to capture, though, and that single rule is what leaves you short of choices when it matters.

Two packs go into the game, and the 42 penalty points hiding in them are concentrated in the spades and in ♦️10. Outside the Nordic countries almost nobody has heard of it.

Two standard packs without jokers, 104 cards, shuffled together into one. Matching back designs help but are not required.

Pen and paper for the score. Some of what you do earns negative points, so leave room for a minus sign in front of the totals.

Table space matters too. The cards in the middle lie face up and spread out where everyone can read them, and each player keeps their captures in a face-down pile of their own.

A card captures a table card of the same value, or a set of table cards adding up to that value. Number cards are worth their pips.

The ace is the only card with two values, and the gap is wide. An ace from hand is a 14, so it cannot take an ace lying on the table, which counts only 1 there. Table aces do count as ones inside a sum, though: with an ace and an 8 on the table, a 9 takes both.

That makes an ace a useful card to creep with early and a painful one to be left holding.

Draw for first dealer, high card deals. Cards go out in batches, and how many go where depends on how many of you there are.

Once everyone has played out their hand, the same dealer gives four more cards each, two at a time. Nothing is ever added to the table after the opening deal. This repeats until the whole pack is gone. On the final deal the dealer says "last cards" so nobody is caught out.

When the pack is finished the game is scored, and the deal moves one place to the left.

Straight after every deal, remove any jacks, queens and kings lying on the table. They take no further part. They are held back for whoever makes the very last capture of the game.

Keep them in two heaps while you play. Spade pictures in one, since each is worth a penalty point, and the rest in the other, since they score nothing. Settling up at the end is then quick.

Picture cards you play from your own hand stay on the table like any other card. Only the ones sitting there the moment a deal is exhausted get taken away.

The player to the dealer's left starts and play goes clockwise. You put exactly one card face up on the table, and then it is the next player's turn.

If your card matches anything, you have to capture. Laying down a card that could have taken something and leaving the cards where they are is not allowed. If it matches nothing, the card stays face up on the table, and that is creeping.

With 8, 9 and a jack on the table and an 8 and a 6 in hand, the 6 creeps. Play the 8 and you must take the 8 from the table.

When your card matches several cards or sums, you take all of them. With ace, 2, 6, 7, 8 and 9 on the table, playing an 8 captures five cards: the 8, then ace + 7, then 2 + 6.

Where possible sums share a card, you only get one of them, and the choice is yours. With 2, 3, 4, 5, 8 and 10 on the table, an ace played as a 14 could take 10 + 4, or 8 + 4 + 2, or 5 + 4 + 3 + 2. Every option needs the 4, so only one happens. Pick the one with the fewest spades, and keep ♦️10 out of it.

Clearing every card off the table is a tabbe, a sweep. If you hold a card that does it, you must play that card. Swedish players call it a tvångstabbe, a forced sweep, and there is no way around it.

A sweep costs you 5 points. The player before you, the one who left the table in that state, gets 5 points off their score instead. Turn the capturing card face up in your pile so the count is there at scoring time.

That reward turns setting up a sweep into an attack rather than an accident. With a 5 and a 4 on the table you creep and say "sweep for a nine", and if the next player holds a 9 the whole heap is theirs. If not, nothing happens and neither of you gains anything.

When a single card, other than an ace, is alone on the table, the next player can be caught by a double sweep. That happens if they capture it with the identical card from the other pack, same rank and same suit. It costs them 10 points and takes 10 off yours. Holding both copies of the other cards of that rank lets them play a different one and escape with an ordinary sweep.

Matching a card with its twin only counts double when that card was alone. Clear the table with a twin and other cards at the same time and it is an ordinary sweep.

When the last cards have been played, everything still on the table goes to the player who captured most recently. The heap of spade picture cards set aside along the way goes there too, which makes the last capture expensive.

If that final card cleared the whole table in the normal way, it also counts as a sweep. If it took only some of the cards, there is no sweep, even though the rest of the table follows it into the pile.

Removing pictures between deals creates positions ordinary Casino never produces. With 6, 10, a jack and a king on the table, the dealer's last card is a 4. Once the pictures come away, 6, 10 and 4 are left, which is a sweep for a 10 against whoever plays next, and the dealer should say so out loud.

Start with the sweeps. Every player scores 5 points for each face-up card in their own pile, and takes 5 points off for each face-up card in the pile of the player to their left.

Then everyone goes through their captures and adds up the cards that count.

The ace of spades counts 2 because it is both an ace and a spade. The two packs hold 42 points in total, and since every sweep cancels against the bonus for setting it up, all the scores together must come to exactly 42. It is a useful check that nobody miscounted.

If everyone has taken at least one sweep, turn one sweep card each back over straight away. They cancel out anyway, and there is less to keep track of.

Agree on the number of games before you start, ideally a multiple of the number of players so everybody deals the same number of times. Lowest total at the end wins.

These rules describe Krypkasino as played in Sweden: two packs, no building, a card that can capture must capture, and 42 penalty points spread across ♦️10, ♠️2, the aces and the spades. A sweep costs 5 points and pays 5 to whoever set it up, and a double sweep is worth 10 each way. The single-pack version, avig kasino, is covered under variants.