Kabalam

Kabalam

Designer: Gioacchino Prestigiacomo
Publisher: ncigames.it/giocarea_eng">GiocAreA Online
Type: Card
Languages: English, Italian
Status: Free
Available from: http://www.davincigames.it/giocarea_eng/12/dagiocare.htm

To play KABALAM you need 2 standard 52-card decks from which you must remove all the 10s, the face cards (J, Q, K) and the 4 jokers: the remaining cards are 72. In this game the suits are not considered. The 9 is the card with higher value, followed by 8, 7, 6, etc. until the Ace that is worth one point. The game can be played by 2, 3 or 4 players, ore even as a patience game.

At the beginning the dealer places a row of three face down cards, spacing out them at least 1 1/2 inches, and over each card places a face up card. The three so-made decks (packets) form the KABALA.

This game is essentially based on the Compounded sum, a particular numeric operation used in Hebraic Cabala. It consists of summing up all the digits that compose a number until it reaches one digit among 1 and 9. Each time a number has more than one digit, its digits are summed up. If the result has two or more digits, the way of proceeding is the same until there is only one digit among 1 and 9.

On your turn, you draw a card & (if able) play card(s) to one of the packets. You can do this by either playing on or more cards of the same rank if that rank equals the compounded sum of the kabala OR by playing 2 cards that add up to the compunded sum of the kabala to a packet. Once this is done, the cards are placed on top of the packet & then the packet is flipped over. You continue until you can no longer play, at which point play passes to the next player.

The player to run out of cards first wins!

This game appeared in issue #12 of GiocAreA Online.