Call My Bluff, the Card Game

Matthew Gray
Special to Spielboy

With some refinements, Call My Bluff may be transformed into a quiet and refined card game while retaining most of the qualities of the original.

In games where few dice are rolled at once, the deck of dice may be used to exactly (statistically speaking) simulate the roll of the dice. The deck is shuffled, a card is drawn at random, acted on, and the card is returned to the deck. Even if the card is not returned to the deck, many games with dice will continue to work well, and occasionally better due to the smoothed distribution of values the deck provides. Call my Bluff, with five dice per player being rolled initially is a different matter.

Using the Deck of Dice, each player can be made to draw 5 cards and use only the black die on each card. This leads to a very dull game. Using 6's as stars, this leads to a certitude that the correct bid for any value is between 6 and 12. Further, through use of the reroll (discard?) rule, it is straightforward to push any bid to 12. This may prove entertaining for a round or two while the other players come to this realization, but it lacks replay value.

The game can be fixed, however. Instead of each player using the black die, before the game, assign half the players to use the black dice and half to use the white dice. This results in a distribution with a somewhat lower variance, but still a playable distribution. In fact, in conjunction with the reroll rule it adds an interesting memory element. Further, by skewing the distribution away from the trivially calculable standard distribution it may increase the bluff element with some players.

Probabilities

The following table shows the probabilities of various quantities of a particular number given the standard rules with dice, the use of just the black die, and the use of alternating assigned colors.

Rules Summary

• Before the game begins, alternately assign each player the color black or white. With an odd number of players the distributions will be more skewed than an even number, but not severely.
• Each player is dealt 5 cards, and while they may look at both dice on each card, only the dice in their assigned color matters for the resolution of bids.
• If a player chooses to reroll, they show one or more cards, and then discard all of their remaining cards, FACE DOWN, into the draw pile. The draw pile is then shuffled and they draw back up to 5 cards, including the ones they have placed face up.
• In all other ways, apply the standard rules.

Variants

These rules are designed to as closely as possible mimic the standard play with dice. Due to the impact of using cards, here are two recommended variants:

• When "rerolling", discard the cards face down into a seperate pile and draw from the draw pile. When the draw pile is exhausted, reshuffle. This will add a little more control in the reroll situation as well as a greater memory element.
• When "rerolling", discard the cards face UP into a seperate discard pile and draw from the draw pile. When the draw pile is exhausted, reshuffle. This will add a substantial memory element and secondary motivation to "reroll": to show dice of your non-assigned color as not matching your bid number (and hence implying they are in other players hands).

Back to the Prison Gaming article.