Thirty-one is a great game of simplicity. Lots of people don’t know this game. I don’t understand why they don’t; but, I guess that I just play a lot more card games than other people do.

How to play:

-First, you have to find some players (most any amount will work). You must also obtain a deck of playing cards.

-You have to shuffle the deck to mix up the cards.

-You then have to pass out 3 cards to each player and put 1 card face up next to the remainder of the deck.

-The player to the left of the dealer gets to go first. After he goes, the person to his left goes, and so on and so forth…

-This player starts off by either drawing one card from the face ups (throw away pile), or the deck.

-The player then gets to place one card on top of the throw away pile (face up).

-The objective of this game is to obtain a hand that contains a higher point value, with all the same suit, than anyone else has.

-Once you think that you have the highest hand, you knock on the table.

-After you knock all the other players get one more turn to play, except that they can’t pick up from the throw away pile anymore.

-After all other players gets another turn, then all of the people show each other their hands and see who has the highest point value with a single suit (or 3 of a kind).

-Getting a hand with 3 of a kind is worth 30.5 points. (So it beats 30, but not 31.)

-The points of each card are as follows:

Aces = 1 or 11 points
(I suggest using them as 11.)
1 = 1 point
2 = 2 points
3 = 3 points
4 = 4 points
5 = 5 points
6 = 6 points
7 = 7 points
8 = 8 points
9 = 9 points
10, jacks, queens, kings = 10 points