pan

pan, card game played only in the western United States, where it is popular as a gambling game in many clubs. It developed from conquian, the ancestor of rummy games.

Eight standard 52-card decks from which the 8s, 9s, and 10s have been removed are used, with cards ranking in descending order K, Q, J, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, A. The game is best with 6 or 7 players, although as many as 15 may play. Each player is dealt 10 cards, in two batches of 5 cards. The rotation of the deal and play is clockwise from the dealer, as in all card games of Spanish origin. The remainder of the pack is placed facedown on the table to form the stock, and the top card is turned faceup beside it to begin the discard pile.

The object of the game is to meld 11 cards. After the deal players may decide whether to stay in the game or drop the hand; if they drop, they usually must pay a forfeit. Melds, as in rummy, are either sequences of three or more cards in the same suit or groups of three or more cards of the same rank. In pan, groups of aces or kings (noncomoquers) are valid regardless of suits; groups of other ranks (comoquers) must be either all of one suit or all of different suits. Certain melds, called conditions, entitle the player to collect from all other players. Valles, or value cards, are 3s, 5s, and 7s. Conditions and their usual collections are a group of valles of one suit (two units), a group of nonvalles of one suit (one unit), a low sequence of 3-2-A (one unit), and a high sequence of K-Q-J (one unit). In some games conditions in spades collect double. In play each player in turn draws one card from the top of the stock or the discard pile. (Some rules forbid drawing from the discard pile; others allow it only if the card drawn may be melded at once.) After drawing, the player may meld or add (lay off) as many cards as he wishes to his previous melds. Then he must discard one card. When a player has melded all 10 cards of his original hand, he must continue to draw and discard until he can meld or lay off the card drawn.

Players may split or borrow cards from previous melds to form new ones, providing that they leave valid melds. Conditions formed by splitting or borrowing collect as if they were entirely new. The first player to meld 11 cards wins the deal and collects a previously established sum from all players who did not drop. He also collects from them again for all of his conditions and takes the forfeits of players who did drop.