How to Play Dutch Blitz

Transform and refresh your card game routine with rounds and rounds of Dutch Blitz. Dutch Blitz is an interactive card game played with specially made cards in which speed, hand eye coordination and smarts are key elements to winning. What makes it so much fun is that the two to four players all play cards at the same time until one Blitzes and ends the game. Here's how the game is played.

Four players are dealt 40 cards from one of four decks - blue pump, red carriage, green plow, and yellow bucket. Each deck contains 10 each of blue, red, green and yellow cards numbered one to 10. Red and blue cards have a Pennsylvania Dutch boy on on them. Green and yellow cards have a Dutch girl.

The Piles

Blitz pile - count 10 cards and place them face up on top of each other. A player wins the game when he has either played all 10 cards from the Blitz pile to the Dutch pile in the middle of the table, or used the cards to build his post pile.

Post pile - count three cards in a row laying face up located to the left of the Blitz pile. Players move these cards to the Dutch pile as they match number and color in ascending order. Use cards from the Blitz pile to keep three cards facing up at all times. To move higher numbered cards from the Blitz pile, players can build down cards in the Post pile by placing cards in boy/girl descending order - example: red boy ten, green girl nine, and so on.

Wood pile - After a player has laid his Blitz pile and post pile down, the remaining cards are a part of his wood pile. As players search for cards to play into the Dutch pile, they will go through the wood pile hoping to play every third card.

Any player with a "1" starts a new Dutch pile in the middle of the table. Players watch their three piles, the Dutch pile, and their opponent's piles all at once in an effort to play all the cards in his Blitz pile and as many cards from his post and wood piles before anyone else does. Anytime during the game, a player can play a "1" and start a new pile. The cards in the Dutch pile are built in ascending order, same color.

When one player has played all the cards from his Blitz pile and/or used them to replace cards in the Post piles, he then yells Blitz. The game stops. A dealer deals the decks back to respective player based on the object and color of player's decks. Players then count the number of cards they played into the Dutch piles. Players who still have cards in the Blitz pile must multiply the number of cards by two and subtract this from the number of cards they played into the Dutch piles. Cards played into the Dutch piles are worth one point. The first player to get to 75 wins the game. Pairs can play as a team and double the winning score to 150 points.

Dutch Blitz was created by Werner Ernst George Muller, a German immigrant, around 1959 in Pennsylvania Dutch Country. The very first Dutch Blitz tournament was held at Eastern Mennonite University in Harrisonburg, Virginia in Feb. 2010. The students had such a good turn out, they will probably have it again this year.

Sources:
Author's own experience
http://www.dutchblitz.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pennsylvania_Dutch_Country
http://weathervane.emu.edu/radiant/archives/56/14/news/new-late-night-activity-dutch-blitz-championship/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_Blitz