Card Games – Chems

I’ve learnt a few new card games and I thought I would share them with y’all. Seeing as these are games, thats right GAMES Colin, they will be stuffed whole-heartedly into the “Gaming” category of the site.

Chems

Today’s card game is Chems. I am not sure of the exact pronunciation, as it’s a crazy french game. The Frenchies here assure me that “Chems/Cams/Kerms” means nothing, it’s just a word so you can substitute whatever you like. It is a team game, real time strategy of sorts, where the aim of the game is to hold four of the same card (every suit of a card), and working as a team attempt to get “DOUBLE CHEMS”, two people with full hands each, and it works like this.

The game must be played with an even number of people, with everyone broken into teams of two. Take 1 deck of cards, shuffle and distribute four cards to each player. Place the remaining deck on the table face down. Each player picks up their cards and looks at their hand. Players may want to rearrange their cards for easier sorting. Once everyone is ready, the dealer flops four cards from the top of the pack onto the table face up. Players wait for the dealer to call “Go” and a mad scramble of choosing one card from your hand and swapping it with one of the cards on the table begins. There are no turns, just all in.

Swapping continues for as long as the players like, unless 3 of the same card (ie, 3 jacks) appear on the table. At this point, or when everyone is done swapping, the dealer takes the cards on the table, turns them back over and puts them in to “burned” pile. A new lot of four cards is flopped onto the table and the process begins again. Once a player has “Chems” they must signal their partner secretly and their partner must say “Chems” or “Double-chems” if they suspect their partner has “Chems” as well. If someone has “Chems” and this noticed by an opposing team they can call “Contra-chems”. If the player is found to have “Chems” when “Contra-chems” is called the player holding the “Chems” must place their cards in the burned pile and take four new cards from the top of the pack. If the player does not have “Chems” they must show two different cards secretly to the accusing player and that player must forego their cards and take four new ones from the pack. The round is won when a team successfully calls “Chems” or “Double-chems”. A team gets one point for “Chems”, two for “Double-chems” and the game continues for as long as you want. Scoring can be replaced easily with “drinks to be distributed” for conversion into a drinking game.

The strategy lies in the relationship and signals you have with your partner. You cannot call Chems on your own cards, so it is important that your partner is always checking for your secret signal, and the signal must be subtle enough that the other players cannot detect when you have “Chems”. Counting cards comes into play where good players can see when someone on the opposing team or their own partner has picked up enough cards to be holding a full hand.

So there you go. Give it a bash, I’m sure you’ll enjoy it. It’s a great game to get to know people with and the real-time card swapping of it makes it very fun and keeps everyone on their toes.

Keep an eye on the blog for more card games to appear, they’ll appear under the “card games” keyword.

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