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Harbacue: A Card Game

Originally published at The Fast Money Round. You can comment here or there.

So, my girlfriend Liz invented a card game. Purely invented it, from what we can gather. I’ve Googled enough to determine that I can’t find a hint of this game anywhere online, so this will be the first actual record of this game.

Harbacue: A Solitaire Game

The object of the game is to stack all cards into one pile. One deck of standard playing cards is shuffled and put face down. Cards are dealt one at a time, each card getting its own pile. Cards are dealt and placed in piles from left to right. A card can only be stacked on another adjacent card if it matches value or suit. For instance, a [3♠] can be stacked on top of a [8♠] and a [K♦] can be stacked on top of a [K♣]. The only other way cards can be stacked is if two cards separate the eligible cards. For instance, in a series of cards showing [5♠] [K♦] [9♣] [8♠], the 8 of Spades can be stacked on top of the 5 of Spades. Cards are stacked from right to left until one pile remains. If a match can be made and stacked, the entire pile gets moved. So, if that previous 8 of Spades had 7 cards under it, the entirety of that pile is stacked on top of the 5 of Spades. The amount of piles that can exist are limited only to the amount of cards in the deck, and the game is over when no cards remain in the dealing pile.

I suppose that these rules make sense, and they seem simplistic enough, but it’s a real fun game, and once you play a few times, you get to see the strategy involved. Keeping score for competitive endeavors is simple enough: lowest amount of piles (and yes, even one-card piles count) wins. The lowest I’ve been able to get so far is 3; Liz’s lowest score is 2 (and that was the first time she played) and of course, the lowest score total is 1.

Give it a play, then tell me what you think.