Sabacc

Sabacc was a totally 100% real, no-foolin' genuine card game. Or you could call it jhabacc, or Sybok, or Prufrock, or Barack, or Shamrock.

It was played with a deck of 76 cards... 60 numbered cards of four suits, and two duplicates of eight special cards. Some of the special cards included The Idiot, Balance, The Star, Balance, The Grue, Beauty, and Granola. The cards were dealt in hands numbering from two to five, except the player to the dealer's right, who got seven. The second card was turned up, except on Tuesdays.

The values of the cards could then be randomly changed by an electronic field under the table, with interference fields set up so each player could lock their cards. The interference fields were turned off for ten minutes every hour on the hour for traffic reports. They were also switched off for Jewish holidays.

The goal of sabacc was to achieve a value of 23 or -23 to win the pot at the center of the table. Players could up the ante and attempt to bluff each other, but the value of anyone's hand could change at any time. Two jacks were a half-sabacc, and if you had a half-sabacc, a third jack was a trelk, resulting in disqualification. A one required a king and a deuce, except at night, when it required a queen and a four. A seven could be trumped, undertrumped or muttonated. All cards except The Idiot could be reversed or ionized, unless the dealer had a cold or was dizzy. Confused players were allowed to pass, but only three times in the course of a night. The top hand was a pure sabacc, followed by a royal sabacc, which could only be beaten by an idiot's array, but the odds against it were astronomical.

Needless to say, drinks were comped during most sabacc tournaments. As hard as it is to believe, Lando Calrissian actually lost a sabacc game once, to Han Solo, who won the Millennium Falcon and a free night with Lando's wife.