Spite and Malice

Play Spite and Malice, the two-deck race with kings wild, against a computer player named Nora. Empty your pay-off pile onto the center stacks before she empties hers, and hold back the card she is waiting for.

How this table works

Before the first deal you see the rules and three options. Pay-off piles hold 20 cards (13 for a short game, 26 for a long one), the center holds 3 stacks (or 4 as an option), and kings may start a stack (on by default). You also set Nora to Easy, Standard, or Expert.

Nora's pay-off pile and side stacks sit at the top of the cloth, the stock and center stacks in the middle, and yours along the bottom. Each center stack is labeled with the rank it needs next. To play, tap a card in your hand, your pay-off card, or the top of a side stack; the places it can go glow, and you tap one. A pay-off or side-stack card with only one legal place goes there on the first tap. Ending your turn is the same motion: tap a hand card, then one of your side stacks.

Undo (key U) takes you back to your last decision. Hint (key H) marks the move an Expert player would make. Table settings hold card size, four-color suits, sort order, Tap twice to play, and speed. The Menu holds Replay this deal, Today's deal (the same cards for everyone on a given date), statistics, and Copy deal details. The Classic deck button swaps the portraits for plain faces. To let the Company play a game by itself, watch a game. Press the speaker button on the toolbar to hear cards make a gentle sound on the center piles; sound is off until you do.

The Intermission button

Games run long, and people walk by. The Intermission button, or the panic key (`, beside the 1, unless you pick another), swaps the piles at once for plain office work or a curtain. Where the browser permits, it fills the display and gives the tab a dull title; Escape twice covers just the window. Come back with the panic key, Escape twice, or the small corner control, and the game is untouched. Menu, then Table settings, holds the choices: Intermission screen (Project plan, Curtain, Dashboard, Spreadsheet, Inbox, Code editor, Report), Go full screen on or off, and a Panic key of `, \ or F2. See how it works.

How to play

Two players, two standard decks shuffled together with no jokers: 104 cards, 8 of each rank. Suits and colors never matter. Ranks run ace low through queen, and the 8 kings are wild. This two-deck, kings-wild form is also known as Cat and Mouse.

The deal

Each player gets a pay-off pile of 20 cards face down, with the top card turned face up, and a hand of 5. The rest, 54 cards with the standard pile, is the stock. (With 13-card piles the stock holds 68; with 26, 42.) Whoever shows the higher pay-off card plays first, a king counting highest. If the two tops are the same rank, both pay-off piles are shuffled together and dealt out again until they differ.

The object

Be the first to play every card of your pay-off pile. Only its top card is ever in play; when you play it, the next one turns up at once and can be played in the same turn.

Center stacks

The center stacks belong to both players. A stack is started with an ace and built up one rank at a time, regardless of suit: ace, 2, 3, and so on up to the queen. At most 3 may be open at once (4 with that option). With all of them open, an ace in your hand has to wait until a stack is completed. When a stack reaches the queen, its 12 cards are shuffled and put under the stock, the space is free, and the player who completed it carries on with the turn.

Kings

A king counts as whatever rank the stack needs next: on a stack built to 6 it is a 7, on a jack it is the queen that completes the stack. With Kings can start a stack on, a king may also open an empty space as an ace; with it off, only a real ace can. A king takes its value only when it lands in the center. On a side stack it is simply a king.

Side stacks

Each player has 4 side stacks of their own. Any card from your hand may go on any of them, in any order, aces and kings included. Only the top card of a side stack can be played, and only to a center stack. Cards never move from one side stack to another, never come back off a center stack, and a pay-off card can never go to a side stack. Every side-stack card is face up and fanned so both players can read the whole stack. When one empties, you can start it again.

A turn

At the start of your turn, draw from the stock until you hold 5 cards. The first player starts with a full hand and draws nothing. Then play as many cards as you like to the center stacks, from three places: your hand, the tops of your side stacks, and your pay-off pile. Nothing forces you to play a card you could play. The turn ends one way only: you put one card from your hand on a side stack. There is no passing.

If you play every card in your hand to the center without discarding, you draw 5 more at once and keep going.

The end

The game ends the moment a player plays the last pay-off card, even with cards still in hand. If a draw is required (at the start of a turn, or after emptying the hand) and the stock is already empty, the game ends in a stalemate. A stock with fewer cards than you need is not a stalemate: you take what is there. In a stalemate the player with fewer pay-off cards left wins; with equal counts the game is a tie. (Pagat's main version calls every stalemate a tie; this table follows the scoring rule printed with it, which gives the stalemate to the smaller pay-off pile.)

Scoring

One game is the whole match, and your statistics record the win or loss. The summary also scores it the traditional way, which tells you how big the win was.

A worked finish. Your pay-off pile is down to 2 cards with a 9 showing; Nora has 7 left. The center stacks are built to 7, 3, and 10. Your hand is 8, 4, 4, 2, and a king.

1. Play the 8 from your hand on the stack at 7. That stack now needs a 9.
2. Play your pay-off 9 on it. One card is left, and it turns up: a jack.
3. Play the pay-off jack on the stack at 10. Your pay-off pile is empty and the game ends on the spot, with four cards still in your hand. The king never had to be spent.
4. For the win: 5 points.
5. For Nora's cards left: 7 × 1 = 7 points.
6. Your total: 5 + 7 = 12 points. Nora scores 0.

Had the stock run out instead, with you on 4 pay-off cards and Nora on 7, you would win the stalemate and score the difference: 7 − 4 = 3 points. At 5 and 5 it is a tie.

Playing it well

Pay-off card first, then play up to it

Your pay-off pile is the only pile that wins. When your hand and your pay-off pile both hold the rank a stack needs, play the pay-off card and keep the hand card. With a 7 showing on your pay-off pile and a stack at 4, a 5 and a 6 from your hand (or a 5 and a king) put the 7 down this turn.

Kings

A king spent on a rank that is coming anyway is the most common waste in the game. Save it for the gap between a stack and your pay-off card, or for the play that empties your hand and draws five fresh cards. Holding 2, 3, 4, queen, and king with a stack at jack, the queen completes that stack, the king opens the freed space as an ace (with the default option), and the 2, 3, and 4 follow: five cards played and a new hand drawn.

The spite

Watch Nora's pay-off card as closely as your own. If she shows a 6, never raise a stack to 5 unless it plays your own pay-off card. Holding 4, 5, and 9 with stacks at 3 and 8, play the 9 on the 8 and keep the 4 and 5 out of the center.

If a stack is already sitting at 5 when she shows a 6, the stack is hers next turn unless you play past it. Playing your own 6 there takes it away; a 6 and a 7 take it further still. She may still hold a king, so a block buys time rather than a sure thing, but every turn she waits is a turn you can use. When she is down to her last few pay-off cards, hold the card she needs even when it costs you a play.

Side stacks

Build each side stack downward: high cards at the bottom, lower ones on top. A stack of queen, 9, 4 with the 4 on top plays out in the natural order as the center climbs; a 4 buried under a 9 sits there until a stack needs a 9. Put equal ranks together: two 5s on one stack cost you one place and both play in a row. Across the four stacks, keep different ranks on top, so that whatever the center needs next, one of them can answer.

The discard

You must discard every turn, so choose the card you can best spare: one far from your next pay-off card and far from what the center stacks need. Don't bury a card you are waiting to play. If your pay-off card is a 7 and the stacks need a 6, don't put a 3 on top of the side stack holding your 6.

Which card to play when two will do

When a hand card and a side-stack top would make the same play, use the hand card. A thinner hand gets you to the five-card redraw sooner. And don't unload your side stacks just because you can: every card you put on a center stack is a step Nora may climb. Play them when they lead somewhere for you.

Completing a stack

With 3 stacks open, completing one frees a space for both players. If Nora shows an ace, or the space would let her start a run toward her pay-off card, think twice before playing a queen you do not need.

Late in the game

Completed stacks go back under the stock, so the stock rarely runs dry. When it does, the lower pay-off count wins.

The Company in Spite and Malice

When a pay-off card is played the Herald gives the count that remains, and calls it again when a player is down to one. When a center stack reaches the queen, its performers take a bow together and leave the square for the stock. The last pay-off card ends the game with its own call.

With two decks on the table, each of the four kings appears twice, and every one of them is wild. A living whist of the 1890s needed fifty-two performers for one deck; this game would need 104, so every member of the Company plays two parts. The French names of the four kings, and why the King of Diamonds shows one eye, are on the Company page.

Questions players ask

Can I put an ace on a side stack?

Yes. Some printed rules forbid discarding aces, but the most widely played version does not, and neither does this table.

How differently does Nora play at each level?

On Easy she plays her pay-off card most of the time and otherwise plays and discards loosely. On Standard she plans her whole turn before the first card: how far it gets her pay-off pile, which kings it spends, how her side stacks stay ordered, and what the stacks she leaves would give you. Expert plans the same way but weighs your chances against hands made up from the cards she cannot see, so she is harder to feed.

Which of Nora's cards can I see, and which of mine can she see?

You both see the same things: each other's pay-off card and count, every card in each other's side stacks, the number of cards in each hand, and the size of the stock. Neither of you sees the other's hand or the pay-off cards below the top.

Does it matter which of two equal stacks I play on?

No. Suits never matter, so two stacks at the same height are interchangeable, and the table offers just one of them.

Can I change the options in the middle of a game?

You can open Rules and options from the Menu at any time, but a change to the rules starts a new game; the one in progress is not altered. Table settings such as card size, speed, and the deck take effect at once.

Sources

1. Spite and MalicePagat (John McLeod)
2. Spite and Malice Card Game RulesGameRules.com
3. Spite and MaliceCats at Cards
4. Spite and maliceWikipedia