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2 Strategy of Ambition 3 Development of Ambition 4 Ambition++, and Other Variants 5 External Links |
Ambition is a "point-trick" game. Points, for scoring, are assigned to certain cards rather than the number of tricks taken. While points are desirable, the player scoring the most points in a round is penalized, earning no points to his or her total and a strike. Players failing to achieve a certain quota (e.g. 11 pts., in a four-player game) can also strike, but retain their points. When a player "strikes out", or receives three Strikes, the game ends and that player is disqualified from winning, regardless of score. The winner is the highest-scoring remaining player.
Ambition differs from most trick-taking games as it makes an objective of scoring second in each round.
There is no trump suit and cards follow a standard ranking with Aces high and Twos low. However, Twos become high in the presence of a face card (or Ace) of the same suit in the trick.
In single-deck Ambition, there are 83 points in the cards and a 2-point bonus for taking the last trick, making 85 points per round. Since the goal is to take as many points as possible without scoring the most, a score of 21 (in a four-player game) is the maximum "safe" score-- a player will not strike taking 21 points as one player must have at least 22. Scores between 17 and 21 are considered probably desirable, but it can be to a player's advantage to take more. For example, a player who knows that another has taken 28 points can take as many as 27 without striking, and it is to his advantage to do so.
Single tricks (in 4-player) play can be worth as few as zero or as many as 26 points, and the King of Clubs (worth 11 points) is often "dropped" onto a trick to surprise the trick-winner with unexpected points. Ambition has the "TRAM" (The Rest Are Mine) property seen in many trumpless trick-taking games: A player with the "lead" late in the round will often have it for the entire remainder. It's usually undesirable to possess the "lead" late in a round, since the player who does so tends to take a large number of points, and often strikes. In the early (tricks 1-4) and middle (5-8) parts of a round, players tend to seek these objectives:
While a player at the upper end of the "safe range", or even moderately above it, desires to avoid taking more points, a player who is sure to strike does the opposite. There is no further penalty for striking with, say, 50 points as opposed to 30, so a player who is sure to strike wishes to take as many of the remaining points as possible, to make the round low-scoring for the other players.
A game of Ambition ends when any player reaches three strikes. Any player with three strikes is disqualified from winning, and the player among the rest with the highest score wins. Normally, the player who wins did so by having several strong, 18-23 point, rounds while striking as rarely as possible. The winning score in a four-player game is normally between 70 and 100; in a three-player game, it's most often between 80 and 120.
Scores cannot be compared between games due to the variable length of an Ambition game. Most four-player games finish after about seven rounds, but they can be as short as three or as long as nine rounds.
Initially titled "Self-Control", the game was renamed "Ambition" after structural changes were made to improve the game. Currently in the 6th revision, the external link below has yet to be updated and contains the complete rules for the 4th edition (November 2003).
Important updates to the 4th edition rules include:
Ambition has been proposed as a Drinking game:
Ambition++: Ambition++ is a variant proposed to further reduce the role hand-luck plays in Ambition, using Church's hand-draft concept, which adds an advanced strategic dimension.
Hand-draft works like this: In multiple rounds of decision-making, players select a fixed number of cards from a pool which are assembled into a hand. A hand-draft schedule indicates the specific numbers of cards which are dealt and selected, and such schedules are often written using a standard notation. For example, the standard dealing practice would be written as:
{13/13, Pass 3}
since 13 cards are dealt, and players have no liberty in selecting which to select for their hand. "Pass 3" indicates a pass of 3 cards to another player, skipped during holding hands. A more complex hand-draft schedule might be:
{4/4, 9/2 : 7/7}
which would indicate this sort of process: Players recieve four forced cards, which automatically go into their hands (they recieve four cards, from which they choose four). Then, the deck is dealt to exhaustion, giving each player a pool of nine from which each selects two, and discards 7. The 28 discards are shuffled (the colon indicates a reshuffle) and redealt: Each player recieves seven force cards.
Combinatorically speaking, there exist a vast number of possible schedules. Three possibilities for Ambition are:
{2/2, 6/2, 5/2 : 1/1, 6/2 : 4/1 : 3/3} (Conventional)
or, for players wishing to preserve the player-to-player pass:
{2/2, 6/2, 5/2 : 1/1, 6/2 : 4/4, Pass 3} (Conventional Passing)
as well as the more restricted
{1/1, 2/1 (x6) : 2/2, 2/1, 2/1 : 2/1 : 1/1} (Binary, or "Pick Yer Poison")
Hand-draft allows players the ability, to some degree, to customize their hands, thus applying their strategy not only to their play, but also their hands. Hand-draft also helps to equalize the deal. The early rounds allow players to select the more desired cards (in Ambition, normally these are low "duckers" and red-suit winners) at first, and the final forced-deal (3/3, or 4/4 followed by pass) ensures that all players take a share of the least-desired cards.
Ambition++ is considered an advanced variant and it is counterproductive to teach hand-draft to beginning players, who will often not know how to assemble an effective hand.
Basics of Ambition
Strategy of Ambition
A balanced hand-- neither too strong nor too weak-- is generally the best. Surprisingly, middle cards (6 through 10) are worse than both high and low cards to have in a hand. The highest cards offer sure or near-sure wins of tricks, and, early in the round, also aid in controlling the game, while low cards are good for evasion. Middle cards are unpredictable and can leave a player with the lead toward the end of the round, if the other players are holding mainly low cards.Development of Ambition
Ambition++, and Other Variants
Quota: The quota, introduced to Ambition to facilitate a faster game, is not always employed, depending on one's geographical region: Outside of the U.S. and on the east coast, Ambition games invariantly use quota; in the Midwest, games without it sometimes occur; players do not "understrike" for failing to achieve it.External Links