Cribbage-- ("Cribbage Minus Minus")

This Cribbage variant was developed by Steve Mathias and Geoffrey Lehr for use with a five-suited deck, like the Stardeck, that makes it easy to distinguish the fifth suit from the others, although it could be played with other decks.

Play is as normal, except that stars (or whatever the fifth suit is) have negative values during the play of the hand, and when counting fifteens after the hand. "Negative fifteen" (eg Q✫, 5✫) still counts as 2 points. Combinations that are identical to another combination except for cards which sum to zero are illegal. (eg, 9♠ 10♠ 4✫ is worth 2 points, but Q✫ 10♠ 10♦ 5♦ is not a valid combination). Stars count as normal for pairs, runs, nobs, etc.

Once the count reaches 31 during play, it is reset to zero, even if a player holds a star and could still play.

Five-suited Bridge

I (finally!) found some rules for bridge with five suits! The rules are summarized in the TIME magazine article Super-Bridge, which appeared on March 7, 1938!

In brief:

Super-Bridge (Five-suited Bridge)

By: Walther Marseille

Players: 4

Deal: 16 cards to each player. One card is left over, and may be swapped with another card by the declarer if desired, but only before play begins.

Bidding: Clubs, Diamonds, Hearts, Spades, Stars (or whatever), No Trump

Play: As normal, but with 16 tricks.

Book: 8 tricks

Points for tricks over book: Clubs & Diamonds, 20; Hearts & Spades, 25; Stars, 30; No Trump, 40.

Game points: 120

Possible Slams: Little slam (14 tricks), Grand Slam (15 tricks), Super-Slam (16 tricks)

I don't know how well the game plays (having not yet played it), but I'm somewhat wary of the point values. It might be better to combine Stars & No Trump. Also, leaving the game points at 100 would, at least, make for a faster game, though whether or not this is desirable is questionable.

The article mentions that this variant eliminates the possibility of a single-suit hand (since there are 16 cards in each hand and only 13 cards in a suit), which could be desirable, although such occurances are rare anyway.