Escalero
Escalero , Eskalero or Eskalero Würfelpoker is a dice game inspired by the card game poker that is very widespread in Austria.
Related games are Yacht with the commercial versions Yahtzee and Kniffel , as well as Generala , Cheerio and also Cameroon and Double Cameroon (with ten dice), Crag (with three dice), Hindenburg and Querpokern .
The rules
The following description follows the rule book of the Piatnik Vienna company ; Variants see below .
The game for two
General
Escalero is played by two people with a set of five poker or eye dice .
The players write down their results on a game pad in a table with ten rows ( rows ) and six columns ( columns ):
| player | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| column | 1 | 2 | 3 | 1 | 2 | 3 |
| 9 1 | ||||||
| 10 2 | ||||||
| B 3 | ||||||
| D 4 | ||||||
| K 5 | ||||||
| A 6 | ||||||
| S. | ||||||
| F. | ||||||
| P | ||||||
| G | ||||||
| total | ||||||
The first six lines of the (actual) table are dedicated to the so-called images, the other four to the combinations; The column totals are entered in a closing line. Each player has three columns available for entering his results.
You can roll the dice three times in each round . A player has the option of leaving the dice lying around or picking them up again after the first throw or after the second throw. After the last throw, the player decides what to enter in the table.
The combinations
The highest throws are
- Grande ( Five of a kind , Five of a kind ). Worth 50 points, served 80 points.
- Poker ( Four of a Kind , Four of a kind ). Worth 40 points, served 45 points.
- Full House : Three of a kind and a pair. Worth 30 points, served 35 points.
- Straight , also road or bottom , that is, A-K-D-B-10 or K-D-B-10-9, or if it is played with dice eye, or 6-5-4-3-2 5-4 -3-2-1. Worth 20 points, served 25 points.
A serving ( throw from the hand ) increases the basic value of straight , full house and poker by five points each, in the case of a grande by 30 points. In the case of serving, it does not matter whether it is the first, second or third throw by a player, it is essential for a throw from the hand that all five dice are thrown at the same time.
If it comes to a throw out of hand, the maximum of three throws is not always exhausted, because after another attempt the extra points may no longer be noted. For example, if a player takes a poker out of hand and tries to reach a grande with his remaining throws, he may, if this does not succeed, only enter the poker with 40 points.
The pictures
Apart from the above combinations, the player must try to reach the various pictures from nine to ace as often as possible, the optimum is five times nine, five times ten, etc. For this you get points as follows: You multiply the number of dice that show the picture with the score for that picture.
Point values of the pictures
The point values of the individual pictures are: a nine counts one point, a ten counts two points, jack three, queen four, king five and the ace six points; for example four jacks are worth twelve points or three kings are worth fifteen points.
In order to save this "conversion", it is very often played with dice instead of poker dice.
Noting the points
At the end of a round, each player enters the points scored in the table in the row (row) corresponding to the picture or combination and in the first, second or third column (column) as desired . Entries may only be made once in each field in the table; items that have been entered once may no longer be changed or moved to another column.
If a player has thrown particularly badly in a round and cannot make a profitable entry, he may delete a field in the table in order to keep the loss small , ie enter a zero in the corresponding field, e.g. B. in the field for the nines in the first column. Of course, once a field has been crossed out, it is no longer available for entry in the further course of the game.
Note : If a player has already crossed the field for the grande, he may count the throw as a poker or full house.
The billing
The winner of a column is the player who was able to achieve the higher total number of points.
Game points are awarded as follows for winning the individual columns .
- The win of the first column is worth one point,
- the win of the second column is worth two points, and
- the win of the third column is worth four [ sic ] points.
If a column ends in a draw, neither player writes a point for it.
If a player wins all three columns, he receives nine points, ie he receives an additional bonus of two points.
The game is now settled according to these points : If a player wins the first and third columns, he has won the game with 1 - 2 + 4 = 3 points, and this number of points is paid out by his opponent according to the key agreed before the start of the game .
The game for three
If three people take part in the game, each player plays for himself against the other two. The winner of a column receives the points from each of the two opponents as in a two-player game.
Win z. B. A receives the second column and B the other two, while C is empty
A: −1 +4 −4 = −1 points,
B: +2 −2 +8 = +8 points, and
C: −1 −2 −4 = −7 points.
If a player wins all three columns, he receives nine points from both opponents.
The game for four or more people
If four or more people take part in a game, pairs are drawn at the beginning. If the number of participants is odd, then either a player plays for two people, or he makes the writer .
Each pair receives three columns, each of the two partners may roll the dice up to three times per round, but only one of the two results per round may be entered in the table. There is a winning pair in each column.
variants
Escalero is also played as follows, in deviation from the above rules.
- As with the related yacht , each player only plays one column instead of three; the winner receives the difference in points according to a key agreed before the start of the game - this should be the original version of the game.
- The table contains eleven instead of ten lines, and in addition to the line for Grande , another line is served for Grande ; this is rated with 100 instead of 80 points and referred to as double grande .
- The straight is valued at 25 instead of 20 points, served at 30 instead of 25 points.
literature
- Fritz Beck: Poker with dice and other dice games , Perlen Reihe Volume 655, Vienna 1978
- "Escalero". In: Hugo Kastner: The great Humboldt encyclopedia of dice games. Humboldts Verlags GmbH, Baden Banden 2007; Pp. 215-219. ISBN 978-3-89994-087-9