Frog (American card game)

Frog

Six-Bid • Tapp

Contracts: frog (pick-up), chico (simple solo) and grand (heart solo)

Frog, sometimes called solo sixty, is a trick-taking,

.

Background

Frog is an American derivative of the south German game of

. The three bids of frog, chico and grand equate to the contracts in Tarok known as: Frage, Solo and Herzsolo.

The earliest rules for frog appear in the 1907 edition of Hoyle's Games.[2] Virtually identical rules appear in the 1908 edition of Foster's Complete Hoyle where it is also described as "a very popular game in Mexico, and seems to be an elementary form of Skat, which it resembles in many ways." Almost every American author follows Foster in speculating that frog is derived from Skat, however, as Dummett remarks, "this is, of course, a complete mistake." Moreover, there is no direct evidence that frog or Rana was ever played in Mexico; all the early sources are American.^[1][3]

The

Rules

The rules of frog have varied little over time. The following are based on the 1909 edition of Foster's Complete Hoyle which describes it as a "very popular game in Mexico".[3]

Players

Three to five may play, but there are only ever three

sits out; with five, cards are dealt to the two players on the left of the dealer and the one on the left. Deal and play are clockwise.

Cards

Frog is played with a

, as follows:

Rank	A	10	K	Q	J	9	8	7	6
Value	11	10	4	3	2	–

Deal and auction

The first dealer is chosen by any desired method. The dealer deals a

of 11 cards.

Beginning with eldest, players may

for one of the following games:

Frog
Name of contract	Exchange with scat	Suits	Chips/point
Frog	Yes	♥ only	x 1
Chico	No	♣, ♠ or ♦	x 2
Grand	No	♥ only	x 4

There is one round of bidding, but a player who announced "Frog" and is outbid by "Chico" may immediately raise to "Grand"; otherwise must pass. The winner of the auction is called the "bidder"^[b] and plays alone against the other two active players. The bidder may not play a higher contract than that which won the auction. In a Frog the bidder exposes the widow, picks it up and discards 3 cards, placing them face down to one side. In Chico and Grand, the widow is untouched.

Play

Eldest leads to the first

. The trick winner takes up the trick and lays it face down before leading to the next trick.

Scoring

Once the eleventh trick is played out, players count up their

In Frog, he scores 1 chip for every point above 60 from each active player. Chico scores double, and Grand quadruple (see table above). If the bidder loses he pays the same rate to every player at the table. This means that if four or five play, the non-active players are also paid by a bidder who loses, but are not required to pay if the bidder wins.

Rule variations

Since the 1950s, most sources modify the pre-war rules slightly as follows:[d]

• The dealer deals 4-(3)-3-4 cards instead of 3-(3)-4-4.
• The widow is not exposed in a Frog

Variants

Solo or Slough

The 1922 Official Rules published a variant of Frog called Solo or Slough. There were changes to some of the contract names and values:^[4]

Solo or Slough
Name of contract	Exchange with scat	Suits	Chips/point
Frog	Yes	♥ only	x 1
Simple Solo	No	♣, ♠ or ♦	x 2
Heart Solo	No	♥ only	x 3

Other differences were:

• The number of possible players increased to seven
• The cards were fanned face down; the player with the lowest chose whether to be dealer or eldest hand for the first deal
• Cards were dealt singly, the 1st, 4th and 8th going to the widow which was called the slough
• In a Frog, the slough was not exposed
• Players started with 11 chips of one colour each worth 10, and 10 chips of another colour, each worth 1
• The first player unable to pay for winnings lost the game
• There were three systems for payments to or from non-active players:
  • They only received payments
  • They paid and received
  • They paid and received for a Solo, but only received for Frog
• In a variation called Penalty Frog, the bidder paid the Heart Solo rate if a Frog contract was lost

Straight Solo

The same rules mentioned a Straight Solo in which the only change to the Solo/Slough rules above was that the Frog contract was omitted. In a Simple Solo contract, 1 chip was paid per point and 2 chips in a Heart Solo.^[4]

Straight Solo
Name of contract	Exchange with scat	Suits	Chips/point
Simple Solo	No	♣, ♠ or ♦	x 1
Heart Solo	No	♥ only	x 2

Coeur d'Alene Solo

The same rules introduced a variant called Coeur d'Alene Solo or simply Coeur d'Alene, this being the name of a town in Idaho. This was the same as Solo or Slough except that there were fixed payments for winning instead of point-based payments. Payments were in the ratio 1:2:3 e.g. 25¢ for Frog, 50¢ for Simple Solo and 75¢ for Heart Solo.^[4]

Coeur d'Alene
Name of contract	Exchange with scat	Suits	Payment
Frog	Yes	♥ only	25¢
Simple Solo	No	♣, ♠ or ♦	50¢
Heart Solo	No	♥ only	75¢

Footnotes

References

Literature

• _ (1907). Hoyle's Games. NY: McClure.
• _ (1922). Official Rules of Card Games. Cincinnati: USPC.
• _ (1924). Hoyle's Standard Games. Cincinnati: USPC.
• Beattie, Rob (2009). The Art of Playing Cards. NY: Quarto.
  ISBN 9780785836698
• Culbertson, Ely
  (1957), Phillips, Hubert (ed.), Culbertson’s Card Games Complete, Watford: Argo
• ISBN 0715610147
• Foster, R.F. (1909). Foster's Complete Hoyle. NY: F.A. Stokes.
• Goren, Charles
  (1961). Goren's Hoyle - Encyclopedia of Games. NY: Chancellor Hall, Ltd.
• ISBN 978-0-141-03787-5
• Pennycook, Andrew (1982). The Book of Card Games. London/NY: Grenada.
  ISBN 0246117567