How these rules are written

The rules of every game here are code: the same code that deals each table, decides each result and settles each score. A rule change does not ship without a test.

Each rules page is read against that code. When a page and the table disagree, one of them is wrong, and the one that is wrong is fixed. That is how a page can say exactly what a count of seven names in Kauda, or what a dublee is worth in Marriage.

Most of these games have no one right way. Families argue about when the maal starts to count in Marriage, or whether an ace sits above the king in Rummy. Where they do, the table here has a setting, and its rules page names the setting and what it starts at.

The ways families play that the table does not have yet are on each page too, under How other families play it, described rather than left out.

A game's history page says where it comes from with a source for each claim, as a link the reader can follow. Where a story is repeated everywhere and written down nowhere, the page says that too.

If your family plays a game another way, the box at the foot of its rules page sends it to us. A rule the table can play can become a setting, and one it cannot is written into the page as one of the other ways it is played.

The date near the top of each rules page is the day it was last read against the table's rules. When the game changes, the page changes with it.