Fizzbin

Overview

The card game Captain Kirk invents on the spot in the Star Trek episode "A Piece of the Action" (first shown 12 January 1968), to distract the gangsters guarding him. It has no real rules, and that is the point: Kirk makes them up as he deals, piling on exceptions until his guard is thoroughly confused and bends to pick up a dropped card.

Source. Checked against a fan transcript of the episode. Everything below is what Kirk says in that scene. Nothing has been added.

1. What Kirk tells us

He introduces it as a game from Beta Antares IV and calls it fizzbin. Spock starts to say he knows the culture there and that there aren't such games, and Kirk cuts him off.

• The deal: each player gets six cards, except the player on the dealer's right, who gets seven.
• The second card is turned up, except on Tuesdays.
• Two jacks make a half fizzbin.
• A third jack would be a sralk, and you'd be disqualified.
• What you need is a king and a deuce, except at night, when you need a queen and a four.
• If you'd been dealt a king instead of the jack, you'd get another card, except when it's dark, when you'd give it back.
• The goal is a royal fizzbin. The odds are, in Kirk's words, astronomical. Spock admits he has never worked them out.
• The last card is called a kronk.

That's all there is. The game ends when the kronk hits the floor.

2. Can you actually play it?

Not as Kirk describes it: there's no way to win, no order of play, and the rules contradict each other. Any playable version is someone's invention, not the episode's, and this page doesn't pick one.

Commonly argued

• Fizzbin has no real rules. Kirk invents it as a distraction.
• The player on the dealer's right gets seven cards; everyone else gets six.
• The second card is dealt face up, except on Tuesdays.
• A third jack is a sralk, and it disqualifies you.
• Nobody knows the odds of a royal fizzbin. Not even Spock.