You are not allowed to look at the spare hand before deciding whether to swap. If as dealer you do not like your hand you can exchange it for the spare hand. Some players will have one more card than others. The spare hand does not belong to anyone.

The dealer then deals out the cards one at a time, clockwise, to form one hand for each player plus a spare hand. It may be that some of these spaces already contain unclaimed chips from previous deals in this case the new chips are added to these. The layout looks something like this:īefore the deal, each player must place nine chips on the board - one on each of the labelled spaces: ace of hearts, king of hearts, queen of hearts, jack of hearts, ten of hearts, king-queen of hearts, 8-9-10, kitty and pot. You also need a supply of chips for betting, and a board or cloth marked out to receive the various stakes. It requires a standard deck of 52 cards, the cards ranking in each suit, from low to high: 2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-J-Q-K-A. Tripoli is best for 4 to 7 players (and is possible for 2 to 9). The game is in three stages: in the first stage, the holders of particular cards collect the relevant stakes the second stage is similar to Poker, and the final stage is a Stops game similar to Michigan or Boodle. In Australia, I am told it is known as Calliente, and in Germany it is still possible to buy a board for the game under the original name Poch. In North America equipment for the game is sold under the names TRIPOLEY®, Rummoli, Michigan Rummy and Royal Rummy. This game, sometimes known as Three in One, is a modern version of the ancient European game Poch. First Stage - collecting stakes for pay cards.

Rules to what are the odds game