How to play Stacking Macao

Empty your hand, and empty it early, because in Macao the points are damage. All four kings fight here, so the stack in front of you grows faster than anywhere else and only a seven ever stops it. Whoever goes out scores nothing; everybody else is charged for their hand, and the lowest total wins.

Macao is played with 54 cards, a full pack plus two jokers, by two to six players. Everybody gets five cards, one more is turned face up to start the pile, and the rest is the face-down stock.

If the card turned up is one that does something it is buried and another is turned, so a round opens on a plain card.

1. Play a card that matches the suit in force or repeats the rank on top.

2. Or take one card from the stock. That is legal even when you hold something playable, and hoarding the seven is half the game. If the card you take fits, you may play it there and then.

3. If a stack of draws or a lost turn is waiting on you, that is the only thing you may deal with.

Play your last card and the round ends immediately. When the stock runs out, the top card of the pile stays put and everything under it is shuffled face down to make a new one.

A card plays when it shares the suit in force or repeats the rank on top. Aces and jokers play on anything.

The suit in force is not always the suit of the card you can see. Right after somebody names a suit, that is the suit to follow, so read the marker beside the pile rather than the card.

A joker has no rank to repeat, so once one is on top only the suit it named will follow it, plus the cards that play on anything.

The seven cuts: it kills a whole stack of draws waiting on you and leaves its own suit in force. The ace plays on anything and lets you name the suit, and so does a joker.

A two adds two cards, a three three, the black joker five and the red joker ten. The four makes the next player lose a turn.

All four kings fight here. Hearts and diamonds add five forwards; spades and clubs add five backwards, so it is the player before you who has to answer those.

Eighteen of the fifty-four cards feed a stack instead of sixteen, and the two extra are the kings everybody is used to playing without a second thought. This is the game the nickname is really about.

Draw cards pool, and here they pool badly. A two lands on a three, a king on either, a joker on any of them, and the player facing the pile owes all of it at once: an umflătură of twenty cards is an ordinary evening at this table.

There are still two ways out and still only two: pass it on bigger, or play a seven and cut it dead. What changes is the arithmetic, four sevens against eighteen attacking cards, so knowing how many sevens have been spent is most of the skill here.

Take a stack and you take every card of it and your turn is over.

When you are reduced to a single card the table says Macao for you. Nobody is fined here for being slow to speak: a mis-tap or a bad connection is not the kind of mistake this game should punish.

Everybody's card count is visible the whole way through, and it is the read the game is built on. The red joker is for the player sitting on two cards, not the one sitting on nine.

The player who goes out scores zero. Everybody else is charged for their hand.

The kings that fight are not the kings that cost. All four attack here, but the charges are the ones every Macao uses. The king of clubs that just cost the player before you five cards is small change in your own hand.

A round nobody wins charges every player for their hand, with a zero for no one.

The match ends the moment somebody's total reaches the target, 500 by default, and that player has lost. This is a race you want to lose slowly.

The winner is the lowest total on the board. If two players finish level at the bottom, the match is drawn.

Open the scores at the top of the table whenever you like.

Tap a card to pick it up, then use the button under your hand to play it, or tap it again to change your mind. You can also drag a card into the middle of the table, or sideways in your hand to reorder it. An illegal card will not stick to the pile.

Play an ace or a joker and the table asks which suit you want before the card lands. The suit in force is marked beside the pile from then on.

The buttons only offer what the rules allow. When a stack is live, the number of cards it will cost you is on the table where you can see it.

A practice match runs entirely on your device against bots, with no connection needed. A bot sees only what any opponent could see: your hand and the stock order stay hidden, so it cannot cheat.

Online, a bot steps in for a player who has gone quiet, so the table keeps moving.