How to Play The Card Game Yaniv

Yaniv is a turn-based card game where you are tasked with reducing the value of your hand to 5 or less, while keeping your opponents’ hands higher than your own. Once you get a handle on the rules, it’s a fairly simple game for two to eight players that can go quite fast or fairly slow—all depending on the cards you can or can’t play.

Things You'll Need

• Deck of cards (52 plus 2 Jokers)
• Playing surface
• Pad of paper
• Pen
• Two to eight players

Instructions

1. Deal out the cards, face down, until each player has a total of five. Place the remainder in the center of the table. These will act as the draw pile. Turn over the top card and place it next to the deck. This will act as the discard pile.

2. Pick up your hand and decide how you would like to play it. You have two basic options of play: discard and draw or declare Yaniv. The object of the game is to bring the sum of your cards to a value of five or less, while each of your opponents’ cards have a sum total of more than your own.

3. Choose to discard and draw for your play. You’ll have the option to discard a single card, a pair of cards or a sequence of cards and then draw just one card from the pile. When discarding a pair, the two cards must be of the same value—a pair of aces, a pair of twos, a pair of threes and so on. When discarding a sequence, the three or more cards must either form a straight within the same suit—an ace, two and three up to a Jack, Queen and King of the same suit—or be three to four cards of the same value—three aces, for example. No matter what number of cards you discard from your hand, you’ll need only to draw one card from the pile.

4. Declare Yaniv. You must announce this at the start of your turn, and you may only do so if the total of your hand is 5 or less. You may not declare Yaniv if you’ve discarded and drawn during your turn. You must wait for play to go around the circle and come back to you to announce Yaniv.

5. Continue play around the circle until someone calls Yaniv. As soon as someone declares they’ve gone down to Yaniv, all players lay down their hands.

6. Compare hands. If the player that called Yaniv has the lowest hand, he is awarded zero points for the round. All other players will total up the value of their hands. Cards are worth their face value—aces being one and face cards being ten—and the scores are noted. The first person to go over 200 points steps out of the game. Play continues until only one person remains.

Tips & Warnings

• If you call Yaniv and do not have the lowest hand in that round, you are given the total of your hand plus an additional 30 points.

• If you reach exactly 100 points, not above it, your score is cut in half. The same also happens if you hit exactly 200 points.

• When drawing a card, you may either pick the top card from the draw pile or the top card from the discard pile. If the player prior to you discarded a sequence, you may pick either the first card in the sequence or the last card in the sequence, no other card in between.

• Jokers may be used as a wild card and substituted for a card you may be lacking in a sequence.

Resources

• Card Games on Yahoo!