Monte Carlo Rulebook

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

• Components
• Preparation
• Object
• How to Play
• Winning and Scoring
• Strategy
• Variants

Components

• One standard deck of 52 playing cards.

Preparation

Deal 25 cards into five rows of 5 cards each, forming a 5x5 grid. The rest of the pack is set aside as the stock.

Object

Remove all the cards by discarding them in pairs of the same rank (for example, pairs of "3"s).

How to Play

1. Remove pairs of cards of the same rank (such as two Kings or two Sixes). Both cards of the pair must be immediately next to each other horizontally, vertically, or diagonally.
2. Once some or all such pairs have been removed, consolidate the cards: move the remaining cards to fill the gaps left by the discarded pairs. The source gives the direction in two ways. The Wikipedia text reads "moving cards to the left as if towards the upper left corner"; the BoardGameGeek description reads "move the remaining cards from right to left and from bottom to top". Both are reproduced as printed.
3. Deal new cards from the stock to form a fresh layout of 25 cards.
4. Repeat from step 1 until it is no longer possible to remove pairs. In the finishing stages of the game one might be stuck with "4-6-4-6."

Winning and Scoring

• The game is out if all cards are successfully discarded. The BoardGameGeek description states that the game is won if the entire deck is discarded in pairs.
• The cards left over count as a minus score: the number of cards remaining is your score, expressed as a negative number.

Strategy

Although luck is a large part of Monte Carlo, strategy can sometimes play a part. For example, one could leave a pair alone to be used to aid freeing a separated pair (e.g. two Queens that are left alone to unlock a Q-7-Q).

Variants

• Monte Carlo Thirteens: instead of pairs of cards with the same rank, kings and pairs of cards with values totalling 13 are removed during game play. Monte Carlo Fourteens is a variant where pairs totalling 14 are removed.
• Fourteens: the same layout is used, but instead of being adjacent, the pairs need to be in the same row or column.
• Aces Square: simplifies Fourteens further by allowing removal of pairs of cards that match in suit (rather than in rank) and that are in the same row or column.
• Five-by-four layout: a less common version of Monte Carlo has the initial 20 cards dealt to form a 5x4 grid.