Strokes
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Best
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Six cards face down, lowest total wins. Swap, flip, and match a column to wipe it to zero — nine holes against a rival.
Six cards sit face down in front of you, two rows of three, and only two of them start face up. The same is true for your rival. Lowest total wins, and the whole game turns on one rule: a column whose two cards have the same rank counts as zero, no matter how big those cards are.
On your turn you either take the top card of the discard pile or draw the top of the stock. A card you take from the discard must go into your six, and the card it replaces goes face up onto the discard. A card drawn from the stock can be used the same way, or you can throw it away instead and turn one of your own face-down cards over.
Card values are A = 1, number cards their own number, J and Q = 10, and K = 0. Kings are therefore free, and a pair of tens in one column is worth exactly as much as a pair of aces: nothing.
The moment either player has all six cards face up, the other player gets one single last turn and the hole ends. Both hands are then revealed and scored. Nine holes make a round, and your score is your own nine-hole total, so lower is better.
The pairing rule is worth more than every other consideration combined, and beginners undervalue it because a ten looks expensive. Holding a ten in a column where the other card is still face down is not a ten, it is a coin flip on a free column. When the discard pile shows a card matching one of your face-up cards, take it almost regardless of its rank: turning a column of ten and something into a flat zero usually saves more than a king would.
Kings are the second-best card in the game and the easiest to misplay. A king costs nothing, so it is a perfect answer to a bad face-up card, but it is a wasted move in a column you could have paired instead. The rule of thumb is to spend kings on columns whose other card is already face up and unpairable, and save your swaps for the columns that are still open.
Flipping a face-down card is never free even though it costs no points. You learn something, but you also move one step closer to ending the hole, which is exactly what you want when you are winning and exactly what you must avoid when you are behind. If your visible total is ugly and the rival has four cards face up, stop flipping and start swapping — every extra turn you buy is a chance for the discard pile to hand you a pair.
Count the rival's exposed cards every turn, because the hole ends on their schedule, not yours. When they have five up you have one meaningful turn left, so make it the highest-value swap available rather than an exploratory flip. Players lose whole holes by turning over a nine on the last turn they will ever get.
Across nine holes the variance is large, so play the average and not the hole. Taking a guaranteed six in a column instead of gambling on a pair is right even when the gamble is tempting, because one disastrous hole of thirty costs more than three careful holes save. The lowest totals come from players who almost never leave a column unresolved, not from players who chase zeros.