I'm psyched that Russcon played Barbu!

Our group calls it Barbuda. I originally got the rules from Evan who played it in the basement of the Texas Union back when they had game night. The most popular place to get the rules is from "Card Games For Dummies" and there are a lot of variants floating around.

I have some comments on the variant listed at http://www.pagat.com/reverse/barbu.html

First off, I find Barbu much more satisfying as a gambling game rather than a ranking game. I don't like the odd end game conditions that can happen when someone determines that they need to do a lot of doubling to improve in rank. It adds a lot of variance at the end of the game that isn't needed. Also, even despite that, the last few rounds often don't need to be played out because the ranks are determined. You also get into situations that I don't like that involve hurting players rather than maximizing your own score. You can also get into kingmaker positions. Anyway, let's just say that I like it better as a gambling game. Another way we used to play was to use tokens (pennies) to keep score. Everyone would start with 200 pennies and then settle difference with pennies instead of on paper. That way you don't really know relative scores and often don't know relative rankings.

I found that the scoring system listed is a bit off. Having "No Tricks" count of -2 is just about meaningless. A really bad run doesn't generally take more than 7 tricks and even a really good run takes a trick or two. That makes the typical max difference about 5. That's only a 10 point difference. Also consider "No Last Two". I find that the strategy is non-obvious but once you get it, it doesn't require a lot of skill. Also generally the same person takes both of the last two so this game typically really screws over a single person.

We only allow people to double the declarer. Part of the fun of Barbu is groaning about your awful hand when the declarer declares. You can't groan if it will elecit doubles (mind games aside).

Another difference is that we play King-Jack insead of King of Hearts. In our version kings are worth something like -6 and jacks are worth something like -3.

I generally recreate the scoring system every time we play based on what people are in the mood for. Also we often leave off a game or two since it makes for a long game. If you want our scoring system, I'll mail it out. It often isn't zero-sum which isn't necessary as the author points out.