Pentathlon Card Game Rules

Points are penalties in Pentathlon, and the player who collects fewest of them across five rounds wins. Each round is a small game in itself, with its own way of hurting you, played from the same pack and written on one shared score sheet.

You need 52 cards without jokers, pen and paper, and 3 to 5 players. Four is the number the game is built for. A game takes 30 to 45 minutes.

Rounds 1, 2, 3 and 5 are trick games in the ordinary way, the same shape as Bridge or Norwegian Whist: follow suit while you are able to. No suit is ever trump, in any round. Round 4 has no tricks in it at all: the cards go into rows on the table instead.

Every card goes out to the players. Four of the five rounds need the hands to be equal, so take one or two red twos out before dealing when the pack will not divide.

• 3 players: one red two comes out, and 51 cards give 17 each
• 4 players: the pack divides as it is, 13 each
• 5 players: two red twos come out, and 50 cards give 10 each

Round 4 works differently. All 52 cards belong in that round whatever the player count, and an uneven hand or two does no harm there.

Whoever deals shuffles first, and the opening card comes from the player on their left. After each round the deal passes one seat to the left.

The ranking is not the same all the way through.

• Rounds 1, 2, 3 and 5: ace on top, then K-Q-J-10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2
• Round 4: king on top, then Q-J-10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2, with the ace at the bottom

That makes the ace three different things over one game. It is a liability while you are dodging tricks, clubs and queens, it takes points off your score in round 5, and in round 4 it is the very last card of its suit that can be played.

Every trick you win in the first round costs you a point, so the target is a clean sheet.

The player left of the dealer leads whatever card they like. Everyone else follows suit if they hold it. Without a card in the led suit you may throw anything, and that card cannot win, because nothing is trump. The highest card of the led suit takes the trick, and whoever took it leads to the next one.

Say Anna leads ♠️4. Bjørn plays ♠️Q, Cecilie is out of spades and throws ♥️2, and Dag adds ♠️9. The queen wins, so Bjørn scores a point he did not want. A low spade in his hand would have saved him.

Lead your low cards and hang on to the long suits. An ace still in your hand at the end will win a trick you did not want.

Now the number of tricks stops mattering and only ♣️ counts. Each club you take home is one point, and there are 13 of them in play no matter how many players sit down, since only red twos ever come out of the pack.

So take tricks freely in this round as long as no club has landed in them. A trick of hearts, spades and diamonds is free.

Your own clubs leave your hand when another suit is led and you have none of it. The club then lands in a trick somebody else wins, and the point goes with it.

Keep a count. Once all 13 clubs have gone, the rest of the round is harmless.

Only the queens score in the third round, and they score heavily: 4 points each, 16 points spread across four suits.

Tricks work as before. A queen in your hand wants to end up in somebody else's trick, and there are two ways to arrange that. Play it when you are void in the led suit, or play it after a higher card of the same suit is already on the table.

♦️K has been played and you hold ♦️Q. Let the queen go now. Hold on to it and you may be the one leading diamonds later, with 4 points to show for it.

The fourth round is a hand of Fan Tan, and no tricks are taken in it. Cards go into four rows in the middle of the table, one per suit, and you are trying to empty your hand.

All 52 cards are dealt for this round. King is high and the ace is low.

• Whoever holds ♥️7 opens with it, face up in the middle
• On your turn you add one card: ♥️6 or ♥️8 to the heart row, or a fresh seven that opens the row for its own suit
• Each row grows both ways from its seven, down towards the ace and up towards the king
• With nothing playable, you pass
• The round ends the moment somebody plays their last card

Each pass costs a point, and so does each card still in your hand when the round ends. Whoever went out scores nothing at all.

Note the opening card. Fan Tan played on its own starts with ♦️7, but the round inside Pentathlon starts with ♥️7.

The last round inverts everything. A trick is worth minus one point now, so you want as many as you can get. The ace is back on top and no suit is trump.

Tricks are played exactly as in rounds 1 to 3. Follow suit when you can, highest card of the led suit wins, winner leads next.

This is where a bad game gets rescued. With four players there are 13 tricks on the table, so a player who sweeps the round drops 13 points. That takes long suits full of high cards.

The most expensive mistake in Pentathlon is playing this round with round 1 reflexes and ducking tricks you should have taken.

Write the round down as soon as it finishes:

• Round 1: one point per trick
• Round 2: one point per ♣️
• Round 3: four points per queen
• Round 4: one point per pass, and one for every card left in hand
• Round 5: minus one point per trick

Add the five columns, and the lowest total takes the game. A four-player game might finish like this:

Cecilie wins it on the two rounds where she gave nothing away: no queens at all, and first out in Fan Tan. Bjørn took the most tricks in round 5 and still finished nine behind her.

These rules describe the Norwegian game Femkamp, which is simply the Norwegian word for pentathlon. The rounds run Pass, Clubs, Queens, Fan Tan and Grand in that order, with no trump suit and the 7 of hearts opening the Fan Tan round. Some tables swap the last two rounds and finish on Fan Tan. Hexathlon and Heptathlon are the longer members of the same family.