Beggar-My-Neighbour

Beggar-My-Neighbour

Beggar-My-Neighbour, also known as Beat Jack Out of Doors, Beat Your Neighbour Out of Doors, Strip Jack Naked, Picture and Draw the Well Dry, is a simple card game somewhat similar in nature to War, and has spawned a more complicated variant, Egyptian Ratscrew. A standard 52-card deck is divided equally between two players, and the two stacks of cards are placed on the table face down. The first player lays down his top card face up, and the opponent plays his top card on it, and this goes on alternately as long as no ace or face card (king, queen, or jack) appears.

If either player turns up such a card, his opponent has to pay a penalty: four cards for an ace, three for a king, two for a queen, or one for a jack. When he has done so, the player of the penalty card wins the hand, takes all the cards in the pile and places them under his pack. The game continues in the same fashion, the winner having the advantage of placing the first card. However, if the second player turns up another ace or face card in the course of paying to the original penalty card, his payment ceases and the first player must pay to this new card. This changing of penalization can continue indefinitely. The hand is lost by the player who, in playing his penalty, turns up neither an ace nor a face card. Then, his opponent acquires all of the cards in the pile. When a single player has all of the cards in the deck in his stack, he has won.

Origins

The game was probably invented in Britain and has been known there since at least the 1860s. It appears in Charles Dickens's 1861 novel "Great Expectations," [ [http://www.19thnovels.com/greatexpectations.php?c=8 "I played the game to an end with Estella, and she beggared me." "Great Expectations" Chapter 8] ] as the only card game Pip, the book's protagonist, as a child seems to know how to play.

Relation to Mathematics

A longstanding question in combinatorial game theory asks whether there is a game of Beggar-My-Neighbour which goes on forever. This can happen only if the game is eventually periodic—that is, if it eventually reaches some state it has been in before. Some smaller decks of cards have infinite games, while others do not. John Conway once listed this among his anti-Hilbert problems, open questions whose pursuit should emphatically "not" drive the future of mathematical research.

Note

References

* [http://www.jstor.org/action/showArticle?doi=10.2307/2589054 Available via JSTOR] (subscription required).


Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Нужно решить контрольную?

Look at other dictionaries:

  • Beggar thy neighbour — Beggar thy neighbour, or beggar my neighbour, policies are those that seek benefits for one country at the expense of others. Such policies attempt to remedy the economic problems in one country by means which tend to worsen the problems of other …   Wikipedia

  • Beggar my neighbour — Saltar a navegación, búsqueda El beggar my neighbour o beggar thy neighbour ( fastidiar al vecino ) fue una práctica política de escala internacional. Ésta no sería superada hasta después de la Segunda Guerra Mundial y hundiría aún más las… …   Wikipedia Español

  • beggar-my-neighbour — /bɛgə mə ˈneɪbə/ (say beguh muh naybuh) noun Also, beggar your neighbour. 1. a card game for two players. –adjective 2. gaining advantage at the expense of another: beggar my neighbour policies. Also, beggar my neighbor …  

  • beggar-my-neighbour — noun a card game for two players in which the object is to win all of the other player s cards • Syn: ↑beggar my neighbor, ↑strip Jack naked • Hypernyms: ↑card game, ↑cards * * * beggˈar my neighˈbour noun 1. A game that goes …   Useful english dictionary

  • Beggar-my-Neighbour-Policy —   [ begə maɪ neɪbə pɔlɪsɪ; englisch »Politik, die den Nachbarn zum Bettler macht«] die, , Form der Außenwirtschaftspolitik, die darauf gerichtet ist, unter bewusster Inkaufnahme von Nachteilen für das Ausland Exportüberschüsse zu erzielen. Damit… …   Universal-Lexikon

  • Beggar My Neighbour (TV series) — infobox television show name = Beggar My Neighbour caption = format = Sitcom runtime = 30 minutes creator = starring = Peter Jones June Whitfield Desmond Walter Ellis Reg Varney Pat Coombs Rosemary Faith country = UK network = BBC first aired =… …   Wikipedia

  • beggar-my-neighbour policy — noun a policy of promoting oneself at the expense of others; used especially of national policy the United States has pursued a beggar my neighbor policy • Syn: ↑beggar my neighbor policy, ↑beggar my neighbor strategy, ↑beggar my neighbour… …   Useful english dictionary

  • beggar-my-neighbour strategy — noun a policy of promoting oneself at the expense of others; used especially of national policy the United States has pursued a beggar my neighbor policy • Syn: ↑beggar my neighbor policy, ↑beggar my neighbour policy, ↑beggar my neighbor strategy …   Useful english dictionary

  • beggar-my-neighbour — adjective Date: 1943 chiefly British beggar thy neighbor …   New Collegiate Dictionary

  • beggar my neighbour — Cockney Rhyming Slang Labour …   English dialects glossary

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
… Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”