Page:Journal of the Straits Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (IA journalofstrait451906roya).pdf/115

 Some Notes on Malay Card Games.

In preparing these notes, I have used as a ground-work the chapter on card games in Mr. Skeat's Malay Magic, but in addition to supplementing that account in some details, I have collated local variations in the rules of the games and collected. some terms which I have not seen recorded elsewhere.

I. Main chabut. This game, says Mr. Skeat, "is a species of vingt-et-un and is played with either twenty-one or thirty- one points" or pips or mata as the Malay idiom is. If the game is thirty-one points, not more than nine people can play: if twenty-one not more than seven. The "ten" cards are not used: according to Mr. Skeat, court cards also are thrown out in the twenty-one game, but I have seen court cards used in both games and counted as ten pips each. The ace (sat) is used and is worth one, ten, or eleven pips as is convenient to the player; except that, if you have two aces in one hand while playing the twenty-one game or three in one hand while playing thirty-one, the ace must be reckoned as worth only one pip. The dealer (perdi) distributes two lunas or 'keel' cards, 'poundation' cards as we might say, to each player. The nicknames for the various combinations in these 'keel' cards given by Mr. Skeat—lunas nikah, a court card and an ace; lunas dua jalor, two threes; kachang di-rendang di-tugalkan, two aces—I have found to be familiar even to the younger generation in Perak. After the 'keel' cards have been dealt, each player in turn draws (chabut) fresh cards from the bottom of the remaining cards of the pack. Whoever gets thirty-one or twenty-one pips exactly, according as to which game is being played, is said to "masok mata." In a game of thirty-one, no player can chabut more than seven cards or more than five in a twenty-one game, and if he has drawn seven or five cards