Tripoly

We did a little switching this week so we could have a special guest post tomorrow :)

When I got married I was introduced by my husband's family to a game that I had never heard of before. This game is Tripoley. I don't like that spelling and didn't realize that's how it was spelled until I looked up information about it for this post. We play by our own house rules therefore I feeling I can change the spelling as well :) My sister-in-law and my in-laws have homemade versions of this game and when we wanted to share this game with our friends this week I thought I'd make our own board. Here's how it turned out:

To play Tripoly you will need:

• Poker chips (two sets=200 was good for a game of 4 but to play with more you may need a larger set.
• A deck of cards
• A place to put 8 sets of chips-you can use bowls or make a board like me :)

To make the board:

• I got a foam board at the dollar store- love that place!
• With a pencil I drew the center lines of the board and diagonal lines from each of the corners through the center. I then traced a styrofoam bowl for the areas which are:
• Ten of hearts, jack of hearts, queen of hearts, queen and king of hearts, king of hearts, ace of hearts, kitty, and 8,9,10 of one suit. 
• There needs to be a place in the middle to put your bets.
• I cut letters out on my Cricut with my Cuttin' Up cartridge. You can also use stickers. 
• I then traced the circles with marker and erased the pencil lines.
• Last I covered it in clear contact paper to seal it off.

Total cost: $8.89 for one set of poker chips :) and the foam board, I had all the other things.

Here are our house rules. Like I said they are different than the actual rules but we feel this is more fun.This is a combination of poker and Michigan rummy (which I have never played or heard of). There is an addition of hearts too in the other rules that we don't play. 

Round 1- Poker

• Deal all the cards to players plus one. For example if there are 4 players deal five hands. The dealer can trade their hand for the extra hand or sell it to the highest bidder. They can not look at both hands. Once they decide to look at the other hand their previous hand is dead which is the same if a person buys the hand.
• Ante up by putting a chip in each spot and one in the middle- 9 all together.
• With the cards you pick five of them that constitute your best poker hand. On my board in each corner I put the hierarchy of poker hands because we can't ever remember what they are. 
• Starting with the person to the left of dealer you start betting just like poker. You can check, see or raise the bet, or call. All chips for betting go in the middle.
• The winner of this round gets all the chips in the middle.

Round 2- Michigan Rummy

• Using the cards from the poker hand and all the rest of your cards you then start with the 2 of clubs and go up in sequence. During this part you will be forced to stop when a card is not available to be played. This can be for a couple different reasons: it has already been played or it is in the dead hand.
• If no one has the next card the person who put down the last card can start a new sequence. It has to be in the opposite color the last sequence was. For example if the last card was a black 10 and no one had the Jack then the person who played the 10 would then have to play a red card. You can start with any number for a sequence after the first round where the 2 of clubs is played. 
• If the 10, jack, queen, king, ace, or king and queen of hearts is played that player gets the chips in that section. Also if you have 8,9, and 10 of the same suit you get those chips. The chips in each section don't get taken every round. 
• Whoever goes out first gets the kitty. All other players put chips in the kitty for the number of cards they had left which the person who won the round gets as well. 
• Play starts over with a new dealer and the poker round. You can play a certain number of rounds or until one person has all the chips which would take forever.

Enjoy!