Agram (card game)

Agram is a trick-taking card game played in Niger and, in related forms, in Mali and Cameroon, where the Cameroonian version is called Fapfap. It is played by two or more players with a 35-card pack made from a standard 52-card deck by removing the kings, queens, jacks and twos of every suit and the ace of spades, which players call the Chief. Each player is dealt six cards in batches of three, and the player to the dealer's right leads any card face up. The others must follow suit if they can and otherwise play anything, and the highest card of the suit led takes the trick. Only the last trick matters, because whoever wins the sixth trick wins the whole game. A close relative, Sink-Sink, deals five cards instead of six. The game is related to Spar, played in Ghana and other West African countries, and is probably descended from a European game brought to the region at the time of the slave trade.