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• Introduction
• Procedure
• Scoring
• Strategy
• Variants
• Software

Introduction

Agurk is the Danish word for cucumber; the game is also sometimes known as 21, since a player with more than 21 points loses. The game was played extensively at DIKU in the 1970s. Even before then, variants of it were popular with bridge players in Denmark and Southern Sweden. A similar game Ogorek (also meaning cucumber) is played in Poland, a relative Mätäpesä is played in Finland, and in Sweden a version called Krypkille is played with Kille cards.

Agurk is an kind of trick taking game, where the player to take the last trick of each deal receives a penalty.

Procedure

Agurk is played with an ordinary deck of 52 cards. From 2 to 7 players participate. The cards are ranked A, K, Q, J, 10, 9, ..., 2; the suits have no significance. Cards are shuffled by the dealer and then dealt 7 at a time, face down, clockwise, starting with the forehand (i.e., the player to the left of the dealer). Cards not dealt are not disclosed.

Seven tricks are played. The cards played are simply placed on the table face-up in front of each player; the cards are neither collected nor turned over after each trick. Any player may inspect any of the cards played to previous tricks. Forehand leads to the first trick; the player to take a trick leads to the next trick. Once a card is led, the remaining players follow to a trick in clockwise rotation.

The lead can be chosen freely. The other players in turn have a choice between:

1. playing any card whose rank is at least as high as the highest card so far played to the trick, or
2. playing their lowest ranking card.

The turn to deal passes clockwise after each hand. If the player whose turn it should be to deal has been eliminated from the game (see below), then the dealer is the next player in rotation who is still in the game.

Scoring

The player who takes the last trick loses the deal and is penalized. Each player's score is the running total of the penalties he has accumulated. The losing player on a deal receives as many penalty points as the rank of the card taking the last trick (A=14, K=13, Q=12, J=11, spot cards according the number of spots).

When a player's score reaches or exceeds 21, he loses a life; in the score, a cucumber is drawn to signify this. He is then reincarnated with the highest score that any other player currently has accumulated. The second time a player's score reaches or exceeds 21, he loses his life permanently and no longer participates in the game. Eventually, only two players remain; they continue to play until one of them loses his second life. The sole survivor is the winner of the game.

If any other players play in the last trick a card of the same rank as the card played by the loser of the deal, these other players are awarded a bonus of the same size as the penalty incurred by the loser. The bonus is deducted from the players score. (Example: in the last trick of a six player game, the cards played are 5, 9, 3, 9, 9, 7, in that order. The fifth player wins the trick with the last 9 and gets 9 penalty points; the second and fourth players each have a bonus of 9 points subtracted from their scores).

Bonuses cannot lower the score below zero. For players on their second life, a bonus cannot lower their score below a cucumber and zero. Bonuses are deducted only after the loser's score is added. Thus in a two-person game where both players are at 18, and both players play a 10 to the last trick, the score for the loser is first changed to cucumber and 18, after which the bonus changes the other player's score to 8.

The winner goes on to deal the first deal of the next game.

Strategy

The best possible hand is four aces, two kings, and a low card. As dealer, you can lead your four aces, stripping all the other players of their four lowest cards, and continuing with your kings is bound to do significant damage. A hand of twos and threes is a boring hand, that will not engage its holder much. A hand of tens and jacks usually heralds catastrophe.

The simplest strategy is to try to survive each deal without taking the last trick. This is done by estimating at what level the last trick is likely to be taken and playing to get rid of cards at or above that level. To play this way is called to fimp. Fimping is an inferior strategy in the long run. Among seasoned players, "fimp" is a derogatory word. Even so, with inferior cards, fimping is the only available strategy.

If all players fimp, the rank of the last trick will be low, and the loser will incur an insignificant penalty. If, instead, the players with high cards (aces, kings, and with less than three players, maybe also queens and jacks) consistently lead their high cards, the unfortunate players without high cards will be forced to discard their low cards early in the game, thus raising the rank of the last trick. This is known as "playing sharp" (no connotation of dishonesty intended). In deals played sharp, a number of players form an alliance to ensure that someone is caught with a much higher card. The rationale behind this strategy is that when someone else is penalized, it should be as severely as possible. Playing sharp with good cards is a superior strategy in the long run; but you don't always hold good cards.

The game is often quite noisy. This means that alliances actually can be suggested orally during play. This includes bluffing, of course. It is not obvious whether the talking makes any difference to the actual play, since alliances are implicit anyway.

The two-person game, to which every game boils down, is quite different from the many-person game and surprisingly difficult to learn to play well.

The winning strategy in the long run is to play sharp almost always but to defect from an alliance of sharp players occasionally (when the cards are hopeless for sharp play). When played by experienced players, the game takes on many of the characteristics of the prisoner's dilemma.

Variants

Some players use a 55-card pack including three jokers. Jokers are then the highest cards, ranking above aces, and count as 15 points.

Some play that after the deal, the player to dealer's left (the first player) can discard a number of unwanted cards. He then draws an equal number of replacement cards from the top of the undealt part of the pack. Each of the other players in turn then has the option to discard the same number of cards as the first player and replenish their hands. You are not allowed to discard a different number of cards from the first player, but you may opt not to discard but to play with your original hand. If the first player does not discard, no one else is allowed to discard. If there are fewer cards remaining in the undealt pack than the first player exchanged, the next player must discard as many cards as remain in the pack or none at all. If the undealt cards run out, later players cannot discard at all.

Some players keep score by leaving the losing card of each hand face up on the table in front of the person who played it. There is no bonus for having a card equal to the losing card. A player whose cards add up to more than 21 drops out of the game - there is no second life.

Some play that if there is a tie for highest card at the end of a hand, all players holding those high cards lose that number of points, which may be indicated by keeping the cards in front of them, if you score that way.

Some play that the game ends as soon as any player goes over 21, and that player is the loser, rather than continuing until all but one player has been knocked out.

Some play that a player whose score reaches 21 points exactly has his score reset to zero (he puts all his scoring cards back in the pack).

Some play that instead of always dealing seven cards, from the second hand onwards the number of cards dealt to each player is the value of the losing card from the previous hand. So if a hand is lost with a jack, 11 cards each are dealt and 11 tricks played. If a two loses, players get only two cards each.

There is an American variant twenty-two, in which it is possible to play several cards at once.

Software

A free Agurk game for windows can be downloaded Jan Uhre's web site.