How to Play Newmarket
Description
A betting and sequence game built around four anchor cards. Play your cards in sequence, collect chips when you hit an anchor, and be the first to empty your hand.
Objective
Be first to play every card in your hand — and pick up bonus chips along the way by playing certain special cards.
Setup
Three to eight players. A King, Queen, Jack, and Ten from a spare deck are laid out separately as the "boodle" cards.
Everyone antes chips onto the boodle cards and into a central pool.
The deck is dealt out to every player, plus one extra hand — the widow — that nobody plays from.
Rules
Whoever leads plays the lowest card they hold of any suit.
Other players continue that same suit in ascending order if they can — you can play more than one card in a row if you hold the next several in sequence.
Play stops when nobody can continue (often because the next card is stuck in the untouched widow) or a King is played. Whoever played last then starts a fresh sequence with their own lowest card.
Play a card that matches one of the boodle cards, and you claim whatever's stacked on it.
Winning
First player to empty their hand sweeps the central pool and claims any chips still sitting on unplayed boodle cards.
Everyone else pays one chip per card still left in their hand.