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Pazaak

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this card game was developed more than 4,000 years before the Battle of Yavin. The basic goal of pazaak was to try to get your own cards to total more than the total of your opponent's cards, while not going over a total of 20. A round of pazaak was called a set, and a player needed to win three sets to win a match. What made the game interesting to many beings was the cards used to play pazaak. The basic set of cards was called the Main Deck, and was readily available. Each Main Deck contained forty cards, numbered from +1 to +10. During game play, however, the exact value of a given card was randomly generated by a computer, so marking of one's cards was not only illegal, but fruitless. In theory, a being could draw +1 nine times in a row. In addition to the Main Deck, a Side Deck was also used in play. This Side Deck started out with ten cards, two of each numbered from +1 to +5. More cards could be obtained with values from +1 to +6, -1 to -6, or mixed cards that could be +/-1 to +/- 6, making for a huge variation in the totals one could have in a given hand. There was no limit to the number of cards in the Side Deck. However, certain cards were only available on certain planets, so travel was required in order to obtain them. Match play began with each player selecting ten cards for their Side Deck, then shuffling their Main Deck. Each round within a set, cards were played onto the table for each player, and the card's value was added or subtracted from the player's score as necessary. A player could stop at any time during a round or a set, although their hand was automatically stopped if they reached a score of 20 or were dealt nine cards. A set ended when both players stopped, or when one player's total exceeded 20. At the end of the set, the player with the highest total won the set, although a tie was not counted to either player's total. To win a match, a player had to win three sets. Many players maintained the number of "net wins" against other opponents, as a way to monitor how many matches they had won. By this count, match play stopped whenever a player won a certain number of matches overall.