The Deck

The Fortunes deck has 5 suits:

There are 14 each of the four primary ("mundane") suits and 22 Stars. The primary suits are numbered from the Ace to 10, with court cards of the Herald or Page, Knight, Riga, and Righ. The Ace always scores low.

When a Tarot deck is substituted for the Fortunes deck, the Major Arcana take the place of the suit of Stars, and the court cards of the various suits (the Page or Princess, Prince or Knight, Queen, and King) take the place of the Fortunes deck's Herald, Knight, Riga and Righ.

Game Preparation

Players are divided into two teams: the dealer's team or High team, which is considered to occupy East-West, and the opposing team or Low team, which is considered to occupy North-South. For the purposes of game play it is not necessary for players to physically orient themselves to the cardinal directions, though purists believe it yields better divinatory results; it is acceptable for the players to consdier the dealer as occupying the East position and identify themselves in relation to him. Thus the player across from the dealer occupies West, the player to his right North, etc.

The Fortunes deck has two more cards than are needed for four people, so before play begins two cards are drawn from the deck and discarded. In classic play these two cards are drawn by the players at South (left of the dealer) and West (across from the dealer); but it is not uncommon for the dealer to simply draw out two cards and set them aside. The dealer will set these cards down on the table (face down) in front of himself as a reminder of who is dealer and which team is High for this game.

Now the dealer distributes all the remaining cards to the players. Each player receives 19 cards.

Betting

Betting can be done in a number of ways. Places and players that focus on the divination aspect of the game generally place bets before the players look at their hands. Places and players that do not concern themselves with divination frequently place bets after the players look at the cards in their hands.

Alternatively, players may place an ante at the start of the game, once players look at the cards in their hands, and then either raise the ante or keep the ante the same (staying the ante) at the beginning of each round. If any player chooses to fold, the game ends and the player with the most points takes the pot. In situations where players on the winning team both have an equal number of points, the pot is split.

In another variation, team members must bid at the beginning of the game how many rounds they will win. Scores are only determined if the players on the team win, at minimum, the number of rounds they bid.

Another variation is for teams to play full games until a team reaches a pre-determined number of points. A subset of this variation is for players to attempt to play to a pre-determined number of points without going over.

Game Play

Play opens with the dealer laying the first card. The lead for subsequent hands moves clockwise, regardless of who won the previous hand. When a member of the Low team leads a hand, low scores win the hand; when a member of the High team leads a hand, that hand will be won by the high-scoring card. Whatever suit the leader of a hand chooses is now the suit in play, and other players must follow suit if they can. If a player has none of the suit in play available, then he may "throw off" a card from another suit or play a card from the suit of Stars.

When a player introduces Stars in a given hand, the scoring of that hand switches. A high-scoring hand becomes a low-scoring hand or vice-versa, regardless of who began the play in that round or who played the Star. Each time a player lays down a Star, the advantage for that hand switches. Once Stars are in play in a given game, anyone can play them, regardless of whether they still have the suit theoretically in play available.

If, however, the player who begins a given round opens that round in the suit of Stars, the advantage for that hand cannot be changed, and any card but a Star is essentially "thrown away".

Scoring

The player who wins a round collects the cards from that hand into a single stack (trick) with the winning card on top (face-up) and lays them before him in a pattern that will allow all the players to identify the order in which those tricks were won. One common method is to lay them down from left to right, overlapping as necessary, but leaving enough of the top card exposed for it to be identified. If the hand won favored the winning player's team (e.g., a high-scoring round won by a player from the High team) the player lays down his trick facing himself. For divinatory purposes, these cards will be interpreted as well-disposed. If the hand won favored the opposing team, he lays down his trick facing his teammate, and when the time comes for divination interpets the top card as ill-disposed. These rule apply whether or not the scoring of the hand has been reversed by the play of a Star. For scoring purposes, each trick is scored as follows: