Nertz is essentially a solitaire card game for two to four players. The objective of the game is to score more points than your opponents by playing cards in sequence from ace to king onto foundation piles. Game play is similar to single player solitaire, except you and your opponents compete simultaneously to play cards onto the shared foundation piles.
At the beginning of each hand, you are dealt 13 cards to your "Nertz" pile (on the left of the table)
and one card face-up to each of your four tableau (column) piles.
Your remaining cards are stacked face down to become the stock.
The top card of each player's Nertz pile is turned face-up and the hand begins.
Players play simultaneously. When any player has exhausted their Nertz pile, the hand ends and scores are tabulated.
The winner is the player with the highest score at the end of the hand.
Face-up cards that are not covered by another card are playable. As with Solitaire, you play cards
to the foundations in sequence of the same suit, ie first the Ace and then the 2 upwards.
The difference here is that all foundations are shared by the players, so, in the case of four players,
there will be 16 foundations in play. When one player plays a card to a foundation, you can play the next card in the suit to
the same foundation.
Note: Simply click/tap any card that can be played to a foundation and it will move there (no need to drag). DO NOT DOUBLE CLICK.
You can build down a tableau/column by playing alternating color cards in descending order. You can also move any sequence of cards in a column to another. When a column becomes empty, you can play any playable card (or sequence of cards) to the empty column. Empty columns are thus very useful and strategic in the game.
Clicking the top card of your stock will turn over 3 cards at a time to a waste pile and you can then play the top exposed card in the waste pile. When the stock is exhausted, click the empty marker and the it will be replenished from the waste pile. You may cycle through the stock as many times as you like.
You can play the top (exposed) card of your Nertz pile whenever possible. When played, the next card in the pile is exposed. The objective is to get rid of your Nertz pile as each card remaining when the hand is over scores against you.
For each card you play to a foundation your score one point. As soon as a player has exhausted their Nertz pile, the hand is over and all other players will score minus two points for each remaining card in their Nertz pile.
Keep an eye on the message/chat window as game status messages are posted, eg when one player is down to their last Nertz card.
If there has been no score for two minutes, it is assumed all players are "stuck". Each players stock will then have it's
top card moved to the bottom. If a further two minutes with no score happens, the hand will be ended and the scores tallied.
In bot play only, the shuffle/end will occur after no score for one minute.
The game is typically played over a number of hands with scores accumulated until a player reaches a predefined score. This version treats each hand as a separate game to keep them short (for other players who may want to join). This can be changed in the future.