by emaise
Everyone should have a copy of Bottle Imp in their collection, and now that it's back in print again with the new Stronghold edition there's no excuse not to pick this game up.But should you find yourself out with some card players and having only a standard deck at your disposal, why not introduce them to this wonderful game using just what's at hand?
Here's how:
Remove all four 7s.
Remove all spades.
Remove the J Q K of clubs.
Remove the A 2 3 of hearts.
Add back in the A 2 3 and J Q K of spades.
Set out the 7 of spades as the initial bottle price. Grab whatever is handy - a coin, perhaps, or a rock, or a salt shaker - and set it on the 7 of spades as the bottle marker.
Now shuffle, deal, and play as normal using the standard Bottle Imp rules, but with the card rankings and score values described below.
Cards are ranked as follows:
* Higher values are ranked above lower values. Aces are low, Kings are high.
* Identical values are ranked by suit.
* Suits are ranked from lowest to highest: clubs < diamonds < hearts (as in Bridge bidding).
So, for example, 9 of clubs beats 8 of hearts, but 9 of hearts beats 9 of clubs.
The low spades (A 2 3) are lower than all other cards, and count as clubs. The high spades (J Q K) are higher than all other cards, and count as hearts.
Cards score their face value. Face cards score 10.
This results in a card ordering and suit distribution that is nearly the same as the original game, and a scoring that is very similar to the original game (but multiplied by about 150%). You can make the ordering even closer to the original by removing the 4 of clubs and 10 of hearts and adding back in the 7 of clubs and 7 of hearts. And you can make the scoring even closer to the original by adding three points for every club taken and subtracting three points for every heart taken (NOT including the low and high spades), and by treating J Q K as 11, 12, and 13 points instead of a flat ten. But I feel that the simpler ordering and scoring arrangement described above is close enough in spirit to the original game that it's not worth the extra complication.
I've played this version with my family and it seems to work well. We all enjoyed it, at any rate! Better by far to use the deck from one of the published editions, but I always appreciate having more first-rate games to play with a standard deck - because no matter where I go, there's always one around.