A Proposed Continental Rule Change
I'm not sure which governing body I need to submit this to, but I'd like to propose a rule change for Continental. (For those not familiar, Continental is a more advanced form of Rummy.)
Contrary to the website I just linked to above, I've always played Continental with the queen of spades as the wild card. While playing Saturday night, the discussion ensued as to which card is the least desirable card to pick up. We all agreed that it would be an ace of any suit, because aces are not only worth fifteen points, but they are also the terminal card in any run, which limits their utility.
But I came up with the interesting notion that the truly most useless card would be the queen of spades if she had her wild card powers stripped away from her. In that case, she'd still cost forty points, but she'd only be a queen of spades qua a queen of spades.
The difficulty with this idea is that there's currently no provision in the rules to strip away the spade queen's wild powers. But, last night, it came to me in a flash. The queen of spades should lose her wild card powers if she's ever used as herself in a set or a run. In other words, if the queen of spades is put down with two other queens as a set -- or if she is placed between the jack of spades and the king of spades in a run -- from that point forward she would be stripped of her wild card powers and be relagated solely to queen status, but still with a forty point whammy.
The only difficulty I see with this proposed rule change is how to mark the downgraded queen in multideck play. Any ideas?
Contrary to the website I just linked to above, I've always played Continental with the queen of spades as the wild card. While playing Saturday night, the discussion ensued as to which card is the least desirable card to pick up. We all agreed that it would be an ace of any suit, because aces are not only worth fifteen points, but they are also the terminal card in any run, which limits their utility.
But I came up with the interesting notion that the truly most useless card would be the queen of spades if she had her wild card powers stripped away from her. In that case, she'd still cost forty points, but she'd only be a queen of spades qua a queen of spades.
The difficulty with this idea is that there's currently no provision in the rules to strip away the spade queen's wild powers. But, last night, it came to me in a flash. The queen of spades should lose her wild card powers if she's ever used as herself in a set or a run. In other words, if the queen of spades is put down with two other queens as a set -- or if she is placed between the jack of spades and the king of spades in a run -- from that point forward she would be stripped of her wild card powers and be relagated solely to queen status, but still with a forty point whammy.
The only difficulty I see with this proposed rule change is how to mark the downgraded queen in multideck play. Any ideas?
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