A
card game for roughly four to
eight players, a superior variant of the game
Bullshit. Like Bullshit, all the cards are dealt out, and the object is to get rid of all your cards. There are four rule changes from regular Bullshit to Russian Bullshit. 1) A player may
discard a
four of a kind at any time. 2) The person leading may play cards of any
alleged value, and play continues on that value until someone calls bullshit. 3) Only the person on the left of the current player may call bullshit. 4) When a person calls bullshit, they turn over one and only one of the cards played. If this card is of the correct
denomination, they pick up the
stack and lose their turn. So, play might go as follows:
John: (putting two cards face down in the middle of the table) "Two fives."
Mark: (playing one card) "One five."
Luke is next to play. He thinks Mark is lying, but isn't sure and would prefer to play. He plays three cards face down.
Luke: "Three fives."
Matt looks at his cards, doesn't see any fives, and knows John will call him if he plays.
Matt: "Bullshit."
Matt runs his fingers over the three cards Luke put down. He turns one of them face up. It's the five of hearts. Matt picks up the pile of cards. John had played two fives, Mark a three, and Luke two fives and a queen. Matt elects to discard the four fives face up out of play, and puts the three and queen in his hand. It is now John's turn. John puts down three cards and says "Three jacks."
Play continues until only one player has any cards. This person has lost*, and can now be referred to as the "durak."** On the next hand, the person to the right of the durak leads. This is known as "teaching the durak."
Russian Bullshit can be played with more than one deck and many people. This of course means that you need all the cards of a particular number before you can discard them.
And naturally, it makes a fine drinking game, in which the loser must drink a shot of vodka, and anyone discarding a set of cards must drink a swig of beer.
* Russian games typically go until someone has lost, not until someone has won.
** "Durak" is Russian for "fool." There is also another fun card game called Durak, whose rules I can never remember, but now that MrFurious has given me the correct spelling, I see that rules and even game servers can be found online.