(yes I know sabacc was created after the clone wars but you can’t stop me)
edit: taking a deeper dive into gambling lore, sabacc was actually around even during the high republic era as it’s mentioned in books in passing. It makes me wonder how long the game has been around because I haven’t found a definitive date on when the game was established. Makes me wonder if it only was more popular later on when we hear about it through Lando + Han Solo, when the empire was established
I’ve been playing sabacc almost every night on Star Wars outlaws + I’m now a menace to the gambling society. win or lose.
but also I just really wanted to practice my line-work without self pressure of cleaning it up or coloring, outside of a one color contrast.
I spent a night researching how to play the different varients of Sabacc for a fanfic and decided to compile things up for the other poor writers out there:
Notes: There's cannon stuff here, but also some of the licensed versions of the games sold at the Disney parks, so take everything here with great assault and check the fontes to see what is cannon and what is not. This post contains the rules of traditional sabacc, the corelian spite, the Coruscant shift and the dice game Hintaro (the one Qui-Gon played to win slaves)
TRADITIONAL SABACC
The traditional sabacc deck is made of 76 cards. Sixty were distributed in four suits (Flasks, Sabers, Staves, and Coins), with 15 cards per suit: pip cards numbered 1 through 11, plus a Commander numbered 12, a Mistress numbered 13, a Master numbered 14, and an Ace numbered 15. The other 16 were two sets of 8 special cards: Blance (−11), The Idiot's (0), Endurance (−8), Moderation (−14), The Evil one (−15), The Queen of Air and Darkness (−2), Demise (−13), and The Stars (−17 and −10). Fonte
The objective of traditional sabacc is to get to a hand total of 23 — positive or negative —, without "bombing out" your hand (getting 24 or more).
A hand with pure 23 (positive or negative) is called Pure Sabacc.
Negative numbers beat their positive counterparts, and thats because there's less negative cards than positive, so the (second) best hand you can ever get is -23, but that also means -19 beats 19, 20, 21 and 22 (because the negative values are worth more).
There's also a thing called the Idiot's Array that's a hand that wins against all the others and consists of an Idiot (Zero), a 2 and a 3 (both negative and positive work). Fonte
While playing you'll be handling two pots, the Sabacc Pot and the Hand Pot. At the start of the game each player put an entrance fee into the Sabacc Pot (I can only assume the credit quantity is defined by the table you are playing) and one player makes an initial bet into the Hand Pot before the dealer gives everyone their cards (usually really small amounts - since you don't know how good your hand will be yet) and that's called "your blind".
After the someone makes the blind and you receive your cards (each player starts with two cards) it's time to play three rounds:
Betting: after seeing your cards you can Call the bet, raise it, or fold it. If you fold it you put all your previous bets into the Sabacc Pot and exit the game.
Trading: that's how you make your hand better. You can either drawn a card, trade a card (by discarting and then buying a card) or stay (which basically is to do nothing). The two important things in this round is that you can't just discard, meaning that if you drawn a card your hand will now forever consist of three cards instead of the initial two, also if you choose to trade you have to DISCARD FIRST then buy a new card so when you discard the card you don't know what you getting next is better or worse then what you initially had in your hand and that brings more of gambling aspect to the game.
Dice: the dice is where things can get really messy. At the end of each turn the dealer rolls two dice and if the numbers/symbols are equal ALL PLAYERS discard the hands, the deck is shuffled again and everyone gets a new hand with two cards and the game basically restarts (keeping all the bets of previous rounds). That is called a SHIFT. If the symbols of the dice don't match nothing happens.
If you have a really good hand and you're trying to milk the other people for credits (which is basically standing by/raising your bets to keep the numbers raising and you can win more money) you are also risking losing your hand with a shift during the dice round, and to counter that you can try to scare your opponent into folding by revealing one of the cards in your hand in the INTERFERENCE FIELD during your turn (either during betting or trading).
So let's imagine I have an Idiot's Array (or I want you to think I have one), I can put my Idiot (0) in the Interference Field so everyone can see. The idiot Array being the best hand in the game chances are everyone's going to fold their hands, unless you think I'm a liar (which is fair). Alternatively if I have a 14 or a 15 (which are cards close to 23) I can pull that in the Interference Field and even if a Shift happens during the dice round all the players keep the cards in their Interference Field. (I truly hope I didn't make this too confusing) You can place as many cards into the Interference Field as you like (out of the hand maximum of 3), but revealing all three cards is basically Calling Alderaan (which I will explain in a bit) and ending the game.
After the dice round the games goes back to the betting round and the cycle (betting, trading, dice) continues until someone calls Alderaan, which happens when this person thinks they have the best hand and won the game. When someone calls Alderaan every player in the table reveals their cards and the players with the best hand takes the HAND POT of every player.
The Sabacc Pot can only be won by a player with a Pure Sabacc hand or an Idiot's Array Hand. So let's say the winning hand in a game is a 20, the winner takes the hand pot of every player, but the Sabacc Pot (made of the blind and all the folders) stays in the game for another game until someone gets a Pure Sabacc or an Idiot's Array. Easy right?
(fonte)
If you or someone else called Alderaan and you Bomb Out — meaning you have a hand total above 23 (negative or positive) or a 0 — you have to pay a fee into the Sabacc Pot.
Besides the Idiot's Array there's another special hand that is the fourth best overall (the Idiot's being the best, then -23 is second and 23 is the third) called The Fairy Empress and it consists of two -2 cards. It's not clear if a Fairy Empress is able to win the Sabacc Pot (my personal opinion is that it don't), so I guess it depends on the house rules.
THE CORELIAN SPIKE SABACC
It's the game portrait in the Solo movie of Han Solo! And (in my opinion) it's like Sabacc for little kids — meaning there's less cards to count. So cute!
The objective here is actually to get a hand as close to ZERO as possible.
The deck is made of 62 cards being 30 green cards with positive numbers going from 1 to 10 (so is three of each number), 30 red cards with negative numbers going to -10 to -1, and 2 Sylops that are worth 0.
Similar to REAL Sabacc we have two pots, the Sabacc Pot and Hand pot. Whoever has the hand closer to zero wins the Hand Pot and if that is a true zero that person also wins the Sabacc Pot.
At the start of a game each player pays the fee at the Sabacc Pot and makes a blind bet, each player gets two cards for their starter hand. The dealer then picks the card from the top of the deck and puts it into the Discard Pile.
The game consists in three phases:
The card phase: you can Stand with your hand, Draw a new card from the deck, or Swap a card either by discarding a card and buying a new one or by picking the card from the top of the discard pile and then discarding a card. Once you drawn a card your hand total goes up, and you can't discard a card without swapping. So let's say you hand total is 4 cards, you can never go back to have 2 cards again.
The betting phase: you can either Check and do nothing, you can Bet and put more money into the Hand Pot either Calling or Raising a previous bet of making one your one if you the first one to play, or you can Junk and exit the game leaving your previous bets on the Sabacc Pot.
And the Dice phase: that works exactly like the one in real Sabacc. So you roll to dice and if the symbols match you discard your hand and pick a new one, except this time you receive the same quantity of cards you had previously. So if you had 4 dice and you had to discard you hand you buy 4 new cards. During the shift (it's unclear if the act of discarding your hand and buying a new one is also called a shift in this game, but that's how I'm calling for this "guide") some dealers can pick the card from the top of the deck and put on the top of the deck so no one can buy the card that was discarded during the shift, thus making the game more fair. But between you and me where the hell are you going to find a fair dealer in the Star Wars universe?!
Corelian Spike has a lot of special hands so I go over each one really quick from the best hand to the less best:
1. Pure Sabacc: two Sylops (the 0 cards)
2. Full Sabacc: 10, -10, 10, -10 and an Sylop.
3. Fleet: 4 of a kind+ a Sylop (so here could be four 1 cards, or four 10 cards, don't matter if they are positive or negative + the Sylop)
4. Yee-Haa (I swear I'm not making this up): a pair and a Sylop (ex: 2, 2 + the Sylop)
5. Rhylet: Three of a kind + a pair (ex: 1,1, 1, -2, -2)
6. Squadron: four of a kind (1,1,1,1)
7. Gee Whiz: positive or negative 1 to 4 + a corresponding 10 (-1,-2,-3,-4,-10 or a 1,2,3,4,10)
8. Straight Khyron: run of 4 cards (ex:3,4,5,6)
9.Bantha's Wild: three of a kind (let's say 3,3 and 3)
10. Rule of two (and name raise so many fucking questions with cannon): two pairs (2,2,4,4)
11. Sabacc pair: a Sabacc with one pair (2,2, -4 — and it is a Sabacc bc it's equal to zero)
You need to consider that most of these eleven wining hands are almost impossible to get, to so most games will end either with a Sabacc ( a hand total to 0 — not to be confused with a PURE Sabacc) or with hand totals of One or Two (so still close to zero). And the Sabacc Pot can only be won if you hand total is zero, even if you have a special winning hand.
Fontes
THE CORUSCANT SHIFT SABACC
This one is actually the easiest of the butch, BUT it have the most different game play.
So the deck have 30 positive cards and 30 negative cards going from the numbers 1 to 10 divided by 3 suits: Circles, Triangles and Squares.
So we have: Circles 1 to 10, Circles -10 to 1, Triangles 1 to 10, Triangles -10 to -1, Squares 1 to 10 and Squares -10 to -1. AND THIS IS REALLY IMPORTANT. The deck also has two Sylops that are equal to 0 and are worth for any Suit. The total amount of cards in the deck is 62, just like Corelian Spike.
The game also uses dice, but they are two different kinds of dice. One of them is a number dice that has the numbers -10, 10, -5, 5 and two zeros, the other one is a shapes dice that has (you've guessed!) circles, triangles and squares.
At the beginning of the game you're going to roll the two dice and see the results, the objective of the game then becomes having the closest number that we called with the numbered dice with the most amount of cards of the shape that we called with our shape dice.
So let's say we called a -5 and a triangle, we need to get as close as we can to a hand total of -5, but also have a certain amount of triangles in our hand to win.
I know it's a little confusing the first time you hear about this shit, but imagine we're playing together and we both have a hand total of pure -5 but I have a 10 square and a -5 circles and you have 7 triangle and a -2 triangle, you actually won from me bc you have more triangles than I. So the shapes are actually used more to decide between a tight. It's actually really easy.
So the game starts by rolling the dice and defining the objective, then the dealer gives FIVE cards for each player instead of the traditional 2 of the other kinds of Sabacc game. Then we have the games phases:
Select: where you select your cards by discarding the ones you don't want. You can't discard as many cards as you want, including your whole hand, as long as you made it clear to everyone in the table how many are you keeping (wink wink) and then we go on into:
Betting: no mystery here, you can raise a bet, call a bet or fold in which case you out all of your cards into discard and leave you previous bets on the table.
Now we restart the circle by giving each player the exact amount of cards they previously discarded. So if you discarded (or if people think you did) four cards you now gain 4 new cards and the table goes into Selecting and Betting again.
You may notice there's no Sabacc pile in the Coruscant Shift, so the winner gets everything despite which hand they ended up with.
When a player is confident enough in their victory they reveal their cards and everyone else needs to do it too, player with the closest total of cards sorted in the dice win, if it's a tie the shape value decides the winning hand, but if it's a tie in numbers and shape (my total is -5 and have 3 triangles and your total is -5 and you have 3 triangles) each player will draw a new card from the pile, player with the biggest number wins the game. So if I draw a 9, but you draw a 10 you won the game.
I actually really like Coruscant Shift because the gameplay aspect of it sound really fun and things can change a lot the more players you have in the table, kind like Space UNO if you think about it. Also is very fitting that Coruscant have the most weird version of the game.
Fontes
HINTARO
Hintaro is a dice game, so it's mostly luck but it has a little twist to it.
Each player has two dice and the dealer has one dice.
The winning dice rolls from weakest to strongest are:
4. Double Kulro
3. Double Tukar
2. Quad Kulro
1. Double Tukar and Double Kulro.
Each face of the dice can 1 Kulro, 2 Kulro, 1 Tukar, 2 Tukar, One Tukar and one Kulro, or a blank — Kulro and Tukar being the names of each symbol.
The dealer dice is different and haves 2 symbols: the Hin symbols cancel out one Tukar, the Taro symbols cancels out one Kulro and a blank.
The game starts with all players rolling their double dice, then they make bets and the dealer rolls their dice to cancel out one symbol in the table, after that the player with the highest winning hand takes the bets. If no one has a winning hand the game continues until someone win.
*Jod, Neel, and SM-33 are playing Sabacc. Neel is winning by a long shot.*
SM-33: Arrr, come on.
Jod: It’s not fair! He doesn’t even know what we’re playing!
Neel, with a big smile: Go Fish?
