Bluff the Bus

For the card game Bluff the Bus you need a deck of playing cards. Shuffle the cards and then deal each player 4 cards they are not allowed to look at yet(!). Once everyone has their cards, everyone gets 3 seconds at the same time to memorise their cards. After that, no more looking at the cards.

Then the (bluffing) game begins. Cards are flipped over one at a time, from bottom to top. If a player has this card, or wants to bluff, they hand this card face down to another player.

This other player has two choices. [Choice 1]: They take the penalty points and accept the card(s) without looking. [Choice 2]: They call the bluff and flip the card over: Is the call right? Then the bluffer gets 2x the penalty points and has to take the card back face down. Is the call wrong? Then you get 2x the penalty points yourself and accept the card face down.

After this, each player has to name their face-down cards — if they still remember them 😉. Each wrong guess costs 5 penalty points.

The player with the most cards at the end goes “on the bus”. Shuffle the cards again and have this person draw a card and toss it. This card determines the length of the bus and whether the bus is open or closed. If the card lands face up, the bus is open. If the card lands face down, the bus is closed. When a 10 or higher has been drawn, a checkpoint may be placed.

The person on the bus must then guess “higher or lower?” for each card and place a new card on top (with a closed bus you flip the card that is lying there). Right? Then move on to the next one. Wrong? Then start all over again and get one penalty point for every card behind you. Then replace the cards (with a closed bus you turn all the cards face down again).