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The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > The best traditional card game you never played: Yaniv!
 
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BigEyeGuy
Sep 4, 2009
 full disclosure: there's a shameless plug at the end of this thread.
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Overview

Yaniv a fast paced traditional card game played by 2 to 5 people, with a draw/discard mechanic somewhat similar to Rummy at it's core.
Played and said to be invented in the backpacking circle which aided the spread of the game around the world.



How to play - the TL;DR version
  • Each player is dealt 5 cards
  • Players take turns clockwise (last round winner goes first)
  • Each turn players must discard at least 1 card and pick no more than 1 card
  • Your goal is to reduce you hand value
  • Discarding sets of equal ranking cards and sets of consecutive cards of the same suit to effectively lower your hand value.
  • When you think you have the lowest hand, you call “YANIV!” at the start of your turn (before drawing/discarding)
  • All players reveal their cards at this point
  • If your hand's value is the lowest, you win the round and your opponents get their hand value in points (points are bad).
  • Be careful, if you call “YANIV” and an opponent has a lower hand you lose and get 30 penalty points on top of your hand value!
  • Players who go above the point threshold (usually 200) are eliminated from the game
  • Last player standing is the winner!

Rules variation

There are quite a few rule variations as is usually the case with card games of this nature.
Some versions allow to quickly discard a card if the card you just drew and the card you discarded were of the same value (Slapdown rule)
Some change the minimum amount needed to call Yaniv all the way from 3 to 11.
Check out the links in the end for a random Yaniv rule generator that mixes all the different variants.

What if I don't have friends?

Got you covered. We created a version for the iPhone which is free to download, and has multiplayer match making.
We have been supporting this game since 2011 and we continue to do so even though it is not making us rich.



You can download it here: http://apple.co/1pX25xv - Yaniv on the App Store



Resources

https://www.pagat.com/draw/yaniv.html - Rules and a bit of background
https://yaniv.co - Great interactive page that explains the rules and also has a Random rule generator
http://apple.co/1pX25xv - Yaniv on the App Store The most definitive digital version of Yaniv guaranteed.
http://www.yanivgame.com/ - Browser based game with multiplayer capabilties, sometimes down... not very reliable but still somewhat active playerbase

* # ? May 3, 2016 21:16
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# ? Apr 23, 2024 10:05
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The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Traditional Games > The best traditional card game you never played: Yaniv!