Mental Jujitsu

Mental Jujitsu is a three player card game that I discovered in a book called "Games for Gifted Kids" when I was a wee lad. Its simple rules, lack of luck and lofty name made it a perfect match for me. Another quality I like is it contains some of the opponent reading of poker without the randomness that dealing cards brings.

How To Play

1. Get two other people to play with you. While you can play with two players the game is best played with three.

2. Separate the cards by suit and give each player a suit. Leave the hearts in a pile, shuffled, in the center.

3. Flip a card over from the heart's pile.

4. Each player then puts a card face down from their hand.

5. After all three players have put a card down, reveal the cards and whoever put down the highest card wins the heart. If there is a tie no one wins the heart.

6. Flip over each card from the heart pile one by one until the pile is exhausted, then each player counts their points.

7. Each card is worth its face value, a 5 of hearts is worth 5 points. Jacks are worth 11, Queens 12, Kings 13 and Aces are worth 15.

A very simple game to learn and teach. The game improves after a few hands once you start to get a feeling for your opponents strategy and after you've had a chance to develop one of your own. You can find a winner by whoever wins the most rounds or by playing to a certain score. Two interesting variations are, play to lose, or put the hearts in an order that all players know.