Gleek (card game)

Gleek is an English card game for exactly three players, played with a stripped forty-four card pack, that was popular in England from the sixteenth through the eighteenth century. It shares historical roots with the French game Glic, recorded as early as 1454, and the German game Poch, placing it among a family of vying games that reward betting and hand strength over pure chance. A hand of Gleek unfolds in four stages: players first bid for extra cards from a stock, then compete for the best hand combination known as a ruff, then declare and score sets of matching cards, and finally play out tricks to earn further points. Its combination of wagering, hand building and trick play made it a fixture of English card playing for some two centuries before it fell out of common use.