Origin Spain Players 2-4 Cards 40 | Type Matching Skills required Attention, Memory Deck Spanish | |
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Chinchón is a matching card game played in Spain, Uruguay, Argentina, Cape Verde and other places. It is a close variant of Gin rummy, with which it shares the same objective: making sets, groups or runs, of matching cards.
Contents
The name is spelled Txintxon in Basque and in Cape Verdean Creole (the latter also features the alternate spellings txin-txon, tchintchom or tchintchon). In Uruguay, the game is called Conga or La Conga.
Game rules
The game of Chinchón is played with a Spanish 40 or 48-card pack. The rules of the game are very similar to those of Gin Rummy, that is, seven cards are given to each player, and the remaining of the deck is laid in the table face down to form the stock. The top card of this pile is then turned face up and laid beside it to start the discard pile. The players look at and sort their cards, and then play by turns. Each turn consists of a draw and a discard:
Once a player has enough sets, they may decide to meld their cards, laying off their hand on the table, and the round ends. That can be done when the player thinks that the value of their unmatched cards, called "deadwood" in Rummy, is less than that of the other players. Each of the players score penalty points equivalent to the sum of the face value of the unmatched cards left in their hand. If a player has no unmatched cards, that is, Gin, they earn a bonus of -10 points. A player automatically wins the game if they manage to make a sequence (run) of seven cards, called chinchón.
When one of the players reaches 100 or more, the game ends, and the player with the lowest score wins.
Conga
In Uruguay, Conga ends when only one player remaining has less than 100 points, as all other players with more than 100 can "reenganche" with the player that has the highest score under 100. Also, players can only meld their cards if they have 5 or less points in their hand, unless their score is 96 or more, as melding requires staying in the game at 100 or less.