Developing the Game

In some card games, eg .Snap, the order the cards are in does matter. In many card games their order does not matter it is only the cards in hand that are important.

Fig A

Fig B

In Fig A the cards are as dealt, in Fig B the cards have been sorted to make playing the game easier.

In the game of Maths the order of the deal does not matter only what is held and unlike snap you are allowed see the cards in your hand.

can be played as




can be played as 


and

can be played as 



Of course

is not the same as


as the cards are different.


Sorting cards before playing them can make the play simpler. For example you could play these cards as dealt

leaving Negative Four on the board.

Some people who have played a lot of games of Maths begin to recognise how the hand of cards will play out before using the counters.

They might know that will give

and will give .

Learning the numbers that add to give Ten is one of the first things it is worth knowing.

Rearranging the hand

allows those in the know to discard

adding nothing to the board, and leaving to play.

Since the counters may be removed as matching black and white pairs.


TIPS

Take any two cards from the above pile and know what counters you will end up with.

Important sets of pairs are a card with its negative.

                                          

Whenever pairs of this type are in your hand the pair may be removed as they will lead to equal numbers of black and white counters.

For example this hand

can be simplified to