Some Notes on Malay Card Games. * 



R. O. WlNSTEDT. 



In preparing these notes, I have used as a ground-work 

 the chapter on card games in Mr. Skeat's Malay Magic, but in 

 addition to supplementing that account in some details, I have 

 collated local variations in the rules of the games and collected 

 some terms which I have not seen recorded elsewhere. 



I. Main chabut. This game, says Mr. Skeat, "is a species 

 of vingt-et-un and is played with either twenty-one or thirty- 

 one points " or pips or mata as the Malay idiom is. If the 

 game is thirty-one points, not more than nine people can play : 

 if twenty-one not more than seven. The " ten " cards are not 

 used : according to Mr. Skeat, court cards also are thrown out 

 in the twenty-one game, but I have seen court cards used in 

 both games and counted as ten pips each. The ace (sat) is 

 used and is worth one, ten, or eleven pips as is convenient to 

 the player ; except that, if you have two aces in one hand while 

 playing the twenty-one game or three in one hand while play- 

 ing thirty-one, the ace must be reckoned as worth only one pip. 

 The dealer (perdi) distributes two lunas or ' keel ' cards, 

 ' poundation ' cards as we might say, to each player. The 

 nicknames for the various combinations in these ' keel ' cards 

 given by Mr. Skeat — lunas nikah, a court card and an ace ; 

 lunas clua jalor, two threes ; kachang di-rendang di-tugalkan, 

 two aces — I have found to be familiar even to the younger 

 generation in Perak. After the 'keel' cards have been dealt, 

 each player in turn draws (chabut) fresh cards from the bottom 

 of the remaining cards of the pack. Whoever gets thirty-one 

 or twenty-one pips exactly, according as to which game is being 

 played, is said to " masok mata" In a game of thirty-one, no 

 player can chabut more than seven cards or more than five in 

 a twenty-one game, and if he has drawn seven or five cards 



Jour. Straits Branch R. A. Soc, No. 45, 1905. 



