Card games in Mali

Agram is played with 31-card pack, made from an international 52-card pack from which the cards 2 to 6 and the Ace of Spades have been removed. Five tricks are played and the object is to win the last trick.

According to an article on the sissoko-cheik website, one of the most popular card games in Mali is 151, a variant of Crazy Eights.

Thierry Depaulis has found the following names of card games from Mali in a recent Bambara-French dictionary (Gérard Dumestre, Dictionnaire bambara-français, Paris, 2011, partly online), unfortunately with little or no explanation of the rules:

cὲmari (also known as 32), fàli n’à bínaakε, kàra, màrasi, mùsomari (version of War), nàfòlòbàcε (women's and children's game), símànsí (similar to 32), sí-tε-dà-sí-kàn (in which players never follow suit), súrukunin.