Kaiso v0.0.1

25-02-24

An authentic Calypso

In the entry on creating Calypso variants I mentioned a part-formed variant inspired by Willis' original version of the game. I have decided to pull my socks up and actually write down some rules.

The game is essentially the same as Calypso, except there are a wider variety of scoring combinations. These scoring combinations (which I call songs to keep with the musical theme) are built up from cards won in tricks, and many can be in-progress at the same time.

I tried it out, and found that it felt broadly right, in terms of my aims. But it also highlighted a few issues that will probably need adjustment. However, for the time being In thought I would document the rules as they currently stand, and at the end give my impressions from the game, which point to areas to adjust for the next draft.

This is not a finished version of the game. As such, the rules presented here may not be completely comprehensive, but should hopefully be clear enough to be playable (barring perhaps some edge cases). If you manage to try it out, do please get in touch with any thoughts/suggestions/suggestions/general feedback. And do check out if there are any updated versions of the rules!

Rules

The structure of the game is the same as the standard version of Calypso. It is played by four in partnerships, with a quadruple-pack of cards that is dealt out over four hands. Each player has their own unique trump suit, and the rules of trick-play are identical.

The way Kaiso differs, however, is in what happens to the cards at the end of a trick. In Calypso this is a mechanical process - cards that can go into the winning partnership's in-progress Calypsoes are added thereto, and those that can't are added to partnerships trickpiles. Throughout the game, the only choice players have is which card to play.

In Kaiso though, there upon winning a trick, the player winning the trick has a choice of what to do with the cards of the trick. They must do so without any communication with their partner. They may deal with the four cards in any order, and for each, may do any of the following options:

  1. Use it to start off a new song for their partnership
  2. Add it to an existing partnership song
  3. Use it to create a medley - joining together two existing partnership songs
  4. Put it in their partnership's trickpile

To understand what these options mean, we must look at what we mean by songs.

Songs

A song is a simply a collection of cards, belonging to one of the two parterships. The cards of a song-in-progress are placed on the table, face-up, and partially overlapping. They should be placed so that all cards in the song are visible to everyone, and with different songs having a bit of gap between them, so that it is clear which cards belong to which song. Cards of one partnership's songs will be played at right-angles compared to the other partnership, so that everyone plays cards oriented towards themselves and their partner.

Now we (sort-of) know what songs are, let's briefly look at the types of scoring combinations available, which will help contextualise things.

Scoring combinations

Scoring combinations can be either 'regular' or 'rainbow'. Regular songs have all cards of the same suit, whilst rainbow songs have cards of all four suits (and at least two each in the case of Calypsoes).

In addition to being regular or rainbow, songs are also 'chords' or 'scales' (Ed: maybe this terminology is mixing metaphors at this stage? Only just coined these as I find it useful to have something to refer to). Chords are songs all of the same rank, while scales are songs with cards of sequential rank.

There is only one type of chord - a quartet (Ed: I previously called this a tetrad, which might fit this new 'chord' terminology better), meaning four cards of the same rank. There are two types of scale - Calypsoes (a run 2 up to Ace, i.e. one card of each rank), or Kaisoes. Kaisoes are a specific run of four cards — 2-5 is a 'Kaiso Minor', 679T is a 'Kaiso midi', and J-A is a 'Kaiso major'. Note that in a Kaiso midi alone we skip out the 8.

In the scoring section we will see the value of each of these.

Composing songs

Now that we understand what we are building, we can look at the each of the four options of what to do with cards won in tricks in turn, and see how they work.

Start a song

Option 1 is to start a new song. This is always available as a choice. To start a new song, simply lay a card from your won trick face up in front of you, not touching any other songs that you may have in-progress (to keep clear which cards are in which song). Place it oriented so that it is right-way-up for you and your partner. You may place it in front of you, or your partner, depending on where there is room on the table. There is no distinction between your songs and your partner's songs.

Add to a song

Option 2 is to add a card to an existing song. If your partnership has any songs in-progress on the table, you may add a card to it (with some restrictions). Place the new card face up, overlapping with pre-existing cards of the song, so that all can be clearly seen. If the card you are placing is of a different rank to those already in the song, it must be placed in the correct relative ranking position — for instance a partial song consisting of a '2' and a '6' to which you would like to add a '4' should have this new card placed in-between the two pre-existing cards (as '4' is greater than '2', and less than '6'). Cards played towards chords can be placed anywhere relative to existing cards.

If after a card is added to a song it forms a valid scoring combination, the player in question may choose to score it. If this happens, the relevant score is noted on the scoresheet, and the cards of the song are placed into a face-up pile to the side of the partnership's trickpile, and play no further part of the game. If the player chooses not to score it (and go for a bigger combination), they are committed to leave it on the table, and may not score it at a later stage. Put another way, scoring combinations may only be scored at the moment that the final card is added to it.

Cards may not be added to songs if they don't build towards a valid scoring combination (not that there would be any advantage in doing so). So if you have a partial song '2,2', you may not add a '3' to it. It is worth noting, however, that at no point do you need to explicitly commit to scoring any particular type of combination - that decision is only made when you actually complete and score a song.

Combine songs - medley

Option 3 is to use the card to combine two pre-existing songs. The card that combines them must be able to fill the 'gap' between the songs. For scales, this means it must be a missing card between the two. So for instance a '6' could be used to make a medley from pre-existing songs '3,4,5' and '7,8,9,T,J', resulting in a single song '3,4,5,6,7,8,9,T,J'. For chords, the card must be the same rank as the others, for instance a '3' combining another '3' with a pair '3,3'.

If there is no 'gap', songs may not be combined. For instance songs with '2,3' and '4,5,6' may not be combined any longer, as there is no missing card between them. On the other hand, cards need not be sequential to combine - you may use a '7' to combine a song '2,4' with 'T,K,A' to create a song '2,4,7,T,K,A'.

As is the casee for adding to a song, scoring combinations may be scored at this moment, but if this is declined they may not be scored (as they stand) at a later stage.

Ditch it

The final option is simply to add the card to your partership's trickpile, where it will play no further part in the game.

Wildcards

8s play a special role in Kaiso, as they are wildcards, in the context of songs. An 8 of any suit may stand in for any other card in a song, regardless of rank or suit. However, they still rank ordinarily as an '8' in the rules of trick-winning.

The rank/suit need not be decided when the 8 is played to a song, but any narrowing-down of it must be respected, and it must still be placed in-position for its assumed rank. For instance in a song '2,3,8,6,K', the '8' may stand in for '4' or '5'. If one of these is later added, then the value of the '8' is fixed. Similar considerations apply to its suit.

A song such as '5,8' can be ambiguous as a chord ('5,5') or a scale (e.g. '5,6'), until it is added to or combined in a medley in such a way to disambiguate it.

In the scoring, any 8s used as a wildcard come with a negative penalty - this does not apply if the '8' functions as its natural rank and suit (which can only happen in a Calypso - which is the reason there is a 'gap' in a Kaiso Midi).

Scoring

At the end of the fourth hand, any cards leftover in partial songs are scored at a penalty as indicated below. This is then combined with all the scores accumulated for completed songs, with the highest score winning.

Song type Regular Rainbow
Calypso 500,750,1000 250,375,500
Kaiso 100 50
Quartet 50 30
8s used as wild -40 each
Leftover song cards -30 each

The first partnership Calypso of any type is scored at the lowest rate, the next at the medium, and the third and any further scored at the highest value. This counts for both players, and mix-and-matching. So for instance North scores a regular Calypso, it is worth 500. Then South scores a rainbow, it will be 375. If South then scores a regular that will be worth 1000. It is the order achieved that affects this.

Design goals

It's probably worth a brief note about what my design aims are for this game.

While some of the other Calypso variants I am exploring are primarily aimed at increasing the amount of strategy (over luck) involved, I am not so focussed on that for Kaiso. That is certainly part of it — introducing another dimension by forcing decisions about what to do with won cards — but I imagine this game will still be more towards the 'luck-influenced' side of things (hopefully with a good amount of skill as well), rather than a particularly scientific game. I think the fact that I am not adjusting trick-play/setup means this is inevitable - sometimes you will just get a set of bad deals, and not win many tricks, in which case it doesn't matter what you do with those cards - you're going to lose. But as ever in such games, hopefully it is still enjoyable, and will balance out in not-too-long-a-time.

I want it to play fairly similarly to Calypso, but offering a choice of other scoring options. I think Calypsoes should still be the 'main' aim, but not completely dominating (otherwise just play Calypso, right?), with Kaisos as a profitable choice. I want players to have to balance attempting to get high-valued combinations with not over-committing. I'd like options for players to minimise losses (quickly wrapping things up for small or even negative points) by getting cards off the table at the end. And crucially I want the choice of what to do with individual cards to be non-obvious ('should I add this to the Calypso? start going for a quartet? discard?'). In short, I want dilemmas.

My main aim is for the game to be fun and interesting, but those are something more like a 'result', and while useful in terms of evaluation, are maybe a bit wooly to focus on too much during design.

Thoughts and impressions

Even while having a first run-through of this, I made a bunch of changes as it became apparent they were probably needed. For instance, initially I had rainbow songs in fixed alternating suit-sequences. I also had another 'blodge' (working name) category of song, which was worth -150, which was essentially sticking an '8' as a zero on any other song-in-progress, as an 'escape hatch', though decided this was probably not necessary. At some stage I had different scores for different Kaisos, and everything had a 'cumulative' scoring system like Calypsoes do, though I streamlined this before getting to any scoring combos.

Here are a few notes from after a playthrough:

The two main thoughts I have for the next draft, aside from these points, are around the scoring combinations. I am considering stopping Kaisoes being fixed sets, and just being any run of four cards (so e.g. 3456 would be valid). With this flexibility, a different number of cards could be possible - maybe five? This will probably need a little thought.

What I'm more convinced is necessary is allowing 'longer' versions of quartets - say 8 of the same rank etc. Then there is a choice of 'stick or twist' with these songs also, and another stream to aim at. Worth noting this is easier though - you can build up two sets of three, before combining with the last two. You can't do that as easily with scales, as your hand may be forced to combine earlier due to the ranks involved.

Another feature I think is probably handy, as mentioned above, is relaxing the suit requirements of songs. Initial thought is for everything to have three categories, which affect the score of the song:

This probably means, at least in the early game, you will be hanging onto all cards. That is kind of my aim, in that I think it should lead to interesting decisions, but it does pose potential practical issues of space, which I may need to address.

With these differences I will need to readjust the scoring, which I think wasn't quite right anyway. I was tempted to ditch any cumulative scoring, but having thought of the idea of cashing some quick and easy 'dirty' Calypsoes to bump up the value of your in-progress single-suited one, I may hang onto it in some form.

I think I will iterate on this fairly soon, and try out a new version with these tweaks. Probably best to do so while relatively fresh in the mind. I went a bit back-and-forth during the game about what I felt about it, but by the end it felt like an approximation of the game I am trying to find.