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rules.md

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Hanabi rules

The deck and the deal

  • 50 cards: five colours - red, yellow, green, blue, white - each with ranks 1 1 1 2 2 3 3 4 4 5 (three 1s, two each of 2, 3 and 4, one 5).
  • The shuffle is a pure function of the episode seed, so a replay re-derives every card.
  • Four seats, four cards each, dealt one at a time seats 0 to 3. 34 cards are left in the deck.
  • Slots are 1..4, left to right: slot 1 is the NEWEST card, the highest-numbered slot the oldest. You hold your cards facing OUT - the other three seats see them, you never do.

Your turn

The seat acting on turn t is t mod 4. You do exactly one of three things:

ActionFieldsLegal when
playslot 1..hand sizealways
discardslot 1..hand sizehint tokens <= 7 (a discard at 8 is illegal)
hinttarget (not yourself), hintType colour or rank, hintValueat least 1 hint token AND the hint touches at least one card in the target's hand

The enumerated list of every legal move is printed in your prompt every turn; copy one of those objects exactly. That list is the legality rule - nothing else is accepted.

Resolution, in order

  1. hint: spend one token. Every card of that colour/rank in the target's hand is marked positively, and every other card in that hand records the negative - which cards a hint did NOT touch is information too.
  2. play: remove the card. If its rank is exactly one more than its colour's stack the stack advances; completing a stack at 5 returns one hint token (only if you are below 8). Otherwise it is a misplay: the card is discarded and one fuse burns.
  3. discard: the card goes to the pile and one hint token comes back.
  4. Draw (play and discard only): the deck's top card enters slot 1 and the others shift one slot higher. With an empty deck nothing is drawn and the hand gets shorter - slots renumber.
  5. Countdown: when the deck empties the countdown arms at 4, so every seat including the one who drew the last card takes exactly one more turn.
  6. Endings, in this order: three misplays -> strikeout; all 25 -> perfect; countdown expired -> deckout; the turn cap -> turnlimit. The episode clock can also stop play between turns -> deadline.

Scoring

score = red + yellow + green + blue + white stack heights, 0..25 - including after a strikeout. Every seat gets the SAME score: you win or lose together. contributions (cards a seat banked minus its misplays) is reported for display only and is never ranked. The league ranks by mean team score over episodes.

Configuration

maxTurns defaults to 80 (20..120); one seat acts per turn, so 80 turns is 80 model requests at most. turnDelayMs paces the spectator view. seed pins the deal.