Lou Card Game Rules:

Lou card game is played in guts format with a trump. Players go In or Out, and those who went In play tricks, following suit. So, although, Lou uses Guts principle and involves draw, it is played with a trump and does not involve poker hands ranking, so Lou is not a poker game.

All players place an ante determined by the dealer into the pot. It is important to notice that the pot will be divided into three equal parts, therefore it is advisable to use antes that can be easily divided by 3 (such as 15 cents, for example). Straight after all players finish anteing, the pot is divided into three equal piles, so the further game will be easier to manage. When this is done, each player receives three face-down cards and trump is flipped.

Players call In or Out. Those who call Out, leave the game, while those who call In continue playing. The first In player to the left of the dealer initiates the game. He throws any card he wants from his hand. The next player in the clockwise direction must either beat this card by a higher card of the same suit or by a trump, or, if he can not beat the card, he throws any card from his hand. If he beats the card, the card he throws is now the one to beat, so the following players must beat it to take the trick. If he throws a trump, next players must throw a higher trump. Otherwise they will not take the trick. The trick is taken by the last player who succeeds to beat the previous highest card.

A player who wins a trick takes one of the three parts of the pot. As far as each player has three cards, all three parts will be taken by someone. Players who call In and do not win any tricks, must match the pot, viz. each one has to place an amount equal to the previous pot into a new one. So, if two or more players call In and do not take any trick, a new pot becomes at least twice larger than the previous one. If there is only one such player, the pot remains the same, and if all In players win at least one trick, the game is over and all players ante to start a new game.

As in all other Guts games, players can call In or Our in the clockwise direction, starting with the player sitting to the left of the dealer, but a better way to is Coin Declare. Coin declare is a system that allows all players to declare their decisions simultaneously, so these decisions will not depend on the decisions of other players. Players take a chip or a coin and hide both hands under the table. Then they raise one closed hands over the table. They might have put a coin into this hand or to raise it empty while the coin is in the other hand that is held under the table. While the hand is closed, other players do not know whether it holds a coin or not. Players then open their hands simultaneously and those who hold a coin declare In and those who open an empty hand declare Out.

Starting all tricks from the first In player to the left of the dealer can result quite disadvantageous for this player, so the player to initiate the game can be determined differently. One of the most interesting ways to it is to take the numerical value of the exposed trump (Ace is 1 to King is 13) and to count this number of spaces, starting from the dealer's left. You can count only In players, or count each space, and if the count stops on an Out player, the next In player in the clockwise direction initiates the game.

Lou can also be played in a different format. Each trick may not be worth a third of the pot, but instead, a player who takes two or three tricks wins the entire pot, while all other In players, even if they won one trick, match the pot. Or only those who take no tricks match the pot and those who take one trick neither pay nor win anything.