Be the first team to get rid of all your cards: ‘hand’ first, and then ‘foot’.
The Deck:
Hand and Foot uses one deck of cards per player with Jokers.
Card Values/Scoring:
- Jokers (Wild Cards): 50 points
- 2’s (Wild Cards): 20 Points
- Aces: 20 Points
- 8’s through Kings: 10 Points
- 4’s through 7’s: 5 Points
- Black 3’s: -100 Points
- Red 3’s: -300 Points
Types of Piles:
- Clean’ pile – Seven real cards of the same rank. 500 Points.
- ‘Dirty’ pile – Less than seven cards of the same rank, and at least one wild card. Example: five 9’s and two Wild Cards. 300 Points.
- ‘Wild’ pile (Special) – All Wild cards. 1500 Points, neither clean nor dirty.
- In order to finish the round and go out, teams must have at least two clean piles and one dirty pile. They are not allowed to go out until this is accomplished.
The Deal:
Shuffle the decks of cards thoroughly. Each player is dealt 13 cards. This first set of 13 cards is called a ‘Hand’. The ‘Hand’ can be picked up and examined by each player.
Each player is then dealt a second set of 13 cards. This second set of dealt cards is called the ‘Foot’, which is played when the ‘Hand’ has been used up, and is kept face-down.
Now, each player has two sets of cards, one set that he has seen, and another set that is kept face-down.
The remainder of the cards are to be kept in the center of the table and are called the ‘Stock’.
The topmost card of the Stock pile is turned face-up as a discard pile.
Starting the Game:
You must put down cards whose individual face values add up to at least the minimum requirement before your team is “in the game”. You can put down several melds at once to achieve this. Cards points must total at least 90 Points.
The Play:
The objective is to get rid of all the cards from your ‘Hand’, and then ‘Foot’ by melding them. A Meld is a set of 3 – 7 cards of the same rank, that are placed face-up. It cannot have less than three cards. A Meld belongs to the team, and not any individual player. After a Meld of three or more cards starts, more cards can be added to it until there are seven cards in the pile. It then becomes a ‘Closed Pile’.
Each player picks up their ‘hand’, and play begins with the player on the left side of the dealer. The player is supposed to draw one card from the Stock on each turn, and then discard one card on each turn.
The player also has the option of ‘picking up the pile’, which means that he can draw the top card from the discard pile, but they must also pick up the same number of cards beneath that equal the point value of the drawn card.
As you go on making melds, the number of cards in ‘Hand’ keep reducing, and you then eventually go on to the ‘Foot’. You need to announce that you are playing your ‘Foot’, and then continue playing. If you happen to lay out all other cards except one, then you can discard it. This marks the end of your turn.
When the pile of seven is completed, the player should place them in a single stack, with the topmost card being a Red for ‘Clean’ and Black for ‘Dirty’.
To ‘Go Out’, the player must get at least two Clean piles and one Dirty pile, and get completely rid of the cards.
How to Keep Score:
When a player goes out, it marks the end of the round. The players are then supposed to calculate their scores, recording the ‘pile count’ first. The players then calculate their second point count, which is calculated from each card’s value that is played. If any card is left in the player’s hand, it will count against the score for that round.
The person or team with the highest score wins.