Conquian
Also known as Conquián, Coon Can, Cooncan, Colonel
- Players
- 2 players
- Deck
- 1 standard deck stripped to 40 cards (A to 7 plus J, Q, K in each suit)
- Time
- 15-25 minutes
- Difficulty
- Medium
- Category
- Rummy family
Setup
Two players, forty cards. A Spanish pack works exactly as it comes. From an ordinary deck, take out the jokers and every eight, nine and ten, which leaves ace through seven plus jack, queen and king in each suit. That gap is not cosmetic: with the middle ranks gone the seven and the jack are neighbours, so a sequence can run 6-7-J. Aces are always low.
Pick a first dealer any way you like and alternate afterwards. Ten cards go to each of you, dealt singly or in pairs, whichever you prefer, and the stock is the twenty nobody was dealt, face down between you. Nothing is turned face up to begin with, and there is never a discard pile: exactly one card is on offer at any moment, and a card that both of you refuse is turned face down and is dead for the rest of the deal.
Melds are laid face up in front of you as you make them and stay there for the rest of the deal, in plain view and — as you will discover — usable against you.
The target is eleven melded cards, not ten. Since you only ever hold ten, you cannot win out of your own hand: the eleventh card has to arrive from the stock or from what your opponent leaves behind.
Play
A meld is what it is everywhere else in rummy: three or four cards of one rank, or a sequence in one suit, which may be anything from three cards to eight. Aces are low and a sequence climbs from the seven straight to the jack, because the ranks between them are not in the pack. That ceiling of eight follows from the target rather than standing as a rule of its own — eleven melded wins, eleven cannot be one combination, and whatever you pair a long sequence with still needs three cards of its own.
What makes Conquian its own game is that no card ever reaches your hand from the table. Anything you take goes face up into a meld the moment you take it, or you do not take it.
Play opens with the non-dealer, who turns the stock's top card face up. Two choices: use it — as part of a fresh meld laid down with cards out of hand, or added to a meld already showing in front of you — or refuse it and leave it lying face up. Using it obliges you to throw one card from your hand face up afterwards, and that thrown card is what your opponent is offered next, so your holdings never grow. You never lay a meld down except with the card you have just taken, and you never add anything to your opponent's melds.
After that the two players alternate through an identical turn. Exactly one card lies face up when your turn begins — your opponent's throw-away, or the stock card they would not have — and it is offered to you first. Take it, meld it, and throw a card of your own face up in its place, which ends your turn; or wave it away, in which case it is turned face down at once and is out of the deal for good. Having waved it away you turn the next card of the stock yourself and face the same two choices with that one: use it and throw a card as before, or refuse it and leave it lying face up, which ends your turn and hands your opponent that card to consider.
That is the entire engine, and it is startlingly tight. There is no drawing to improve a holding, no keeping a card back for a turn or two, no discard pile to mine later. Twenty stock cards and two ten-card hands are the whole world, and every card either goes on the table at once or is dead.
Forcing. If the face-up card could join a meld already in front of you without help from your hand, and you decline it, your opponent may compel you to take it; you add it to the meld and still owe a card from your hand. They are allowed to move your melded cards about to make it fit, provided everything they leave on the table is still legal. This is not politeness, it is a weapon: an exposed meld is a standing liability, because your opponent can spend a card of their choosing to rip one out of your hand at a moment when you have none to spare. It is worth thinking twice before laying a long sequence down early.
Rearranging. Cards already melded are not frozen in place. You may move them between your own melds and borrow from one to build another, as long as everything left on the table is still a legal meld of at least three cards. A five-card sequence can lend a card to start a set; a four-card set can spare one and survive.
Winning. Because every card you take is paid for with a card you throw, ten is the ceiling on what you can hold and show: hand plus table never adds up to more. The target sits one above that ceiling deliberately. Put all ten down and you have an empty hand, a complete table, and no victory — there is simply nothing left to throw, so your turns become a matter of waiting. What settles the deal is a card that extends something already in front of you: when one is offered or turned and you take it, no discard is owed in return, and that eleventh melded card finishes the hand on the spot.
Running out. The deal is a draw when the last card of the stock has been turned, both players have finished with it, and neither has eleven cards on the table. There is nothing left to turn, so play stops there and neither player has lost.
Goal & scoring
Conquian keeps no score. A deal is won outright by whoever first has eleven cards melded face up, and that is the end of it — traditionally the game was played one deal at a time for a stake settled beforehand.
Draws are frequent and they are the interesting part. When the stock is spent and the last exposed card goes begging, nobody has won, the stake stays on the table for the next deal, and some players double it before that one starts. Two or three draws in a row can leave a single hand worth a great deal, which is precisely why the game rewards a player who waits rather than one who reaches.
To run a session without money, one arrangement is for the winner of a deal to score whatever the loser was still holding, repeating deals until somebody passes an agreed total. The awkward part is deciding what those cards are worth; one published schedule leaves the two to the seven at face value, makes every court card ten and puts the ace at fifteen. A deal won against an opponent still clutching four courts then counts for more than one scraped against an empty hand, which a flat point per deal cannot show.
Variants
Nine-card deal — Several published rule sets deal nine cards apiece and set the target at ten melded rather than eleven. The deal runs shorter and the stock is two cards deeper. Nothing else changes, but since the sources genuinely disagree about which is standard, agree on the number before the first card is dealt.
Full 52-card pack — Leave the eights, nines and tens in. Sequences then behave the way every other rummy player expects and the stock grows from twenty cards to thirty-two, which makes it a friendlier introduction. It is also rarely met: the short pack is what players of the game actually use, and the long one costs the tension that comes from a deck small enough to track card by card.
Three or four players — Conquian is not only a two-hander, and the same forty cards stretch to a bigger table by shrinking the hands. Three players take eight each and go out on nine; four take seven each and go out on eight. The exposed card travels round the table rather than back and forth, and anybody who could add it to their own melds is liable to be made to take it, so the standing threat that shapes the two-player game now comes at you from more than one direction. Mexican tables open with a swap as well: everyone picks a card, puts it face down at the same moment, and passes it to the same neighbour, committing before seeing what arrives.
Panguingue — A gambling relative of Conquian, known as Pan, played for decades in card rooms across the American southwest — though its own roots are more likely Philippine than Mexican, and the kinship is a family resemblance rather than a line of descent. Four to eight players use eight 40-card packs shuffled together, 320 cards, and certain melds, called conditions, pay out in chips the moment they are laid down rather than at the end of the deal. Which runs and which sets qualify takes a thicket of rules to say, and a player who does not like their hand may fold out before play begins.
Background
Conquian is the oldest game in the rummy family that anyone can still put a name to. It was being played in Mexico by the middle of the nineteenth century. The card writer R. F. Foster dated its arrival in the American southwest to the 1860s without saying how he knew; what actually survives is a description from 1887, by which time it was going under the name Coon Can. Card historians — David Parlett among them — treat it as the root that every western rummy game grew out of. Playing it feels like reading a first draft of Gin Rummy, with the drawing and the hoarding not yet invented.
Rules checked against Pagat, Wikipedia, Bicycle Cards, Denexa Games, Cool Old Games, GameRules.com, David Parlett, card game histories.