Bing Crosby's Game Call Me Lucky Board Game Rules Explained With Pictures

Bing Crosby’s Game Call Me Lucky

The objective of Bing Crosby’s Game Call Me Lucky is to capture cards in order to score the most points.

Setup

Place the gameboard in the middle of the table.
Each player takes a set of cards and a holder of the same color.
You will shuffle your own set of cards and place them face down inside your card holder.
Choose a player to start the game. Play moves clockwise throughout the game.

Playing Bing Crosby’s Game Call Me Lucky

Each turn in Bing Crosby’s Game Call Me Lucky consists of two main phases.

Playing from the Board
Drawing and Playing a Card

Playing from the Board in Bing Crosby’s Game Call Me Lucky

For your first couple of turns you will likely skip this phase of your turn as you likely won’t be able to take an action.

To start each of your turns you will look for opportunities where you can steal cards from the other players. Look at the positions of the cards already played to the board. You are looking for situations where one or more of your colored cards touch an opponent’s card. A card can touch either by sharing a side or by being connected by a corner.

Touching cards in Bing Crosby's Game Call Me Lucky — This picture illustrates both ways that cards can touch an opponent’s pile. The red three is touching the blue nine by sharing a side. The red six is touching since it shares a corner with the blue nine.

When one or more of your cards are touching an opponent’s card, you can potentially capture that card. You can capture opponent’s cards in two ways during this phase of your turn. You may capture multiple piles during this phase of your turn.

Capturing a Pile With the Same Number

If one of your cards are on top of a pile that is touching an opponent’s pile, you can capture it if both top cards are the same number. For example your pile has a five on top of it and your opponent’s pile also has a five on top of it.

Capturing a card of the same number in Bing Crosby's Game Call Me Lucky — It is the green player’s turn. On the board they have one of their cards that touches a yellow card. Since both cards are the same number, the green player can capture the yellow pile with their pile.

To capture the other player’s pile, move all of the cards from your pile to the top of the other pile.

Capturing a card of the same number — The green player captures the yellow player’s pile by moving their pile on top of the yellow player’s pile.

You cannot use this technique to capture one of your own piles with another of your piles. Basically you can’t combine two of your piles together.

Capturing a Pile With Addition

The other way you can capture an opponent’s pile during this phase of your turn is with addition. In this situation you need to have two or more or your piles adjacent to an opponent’s pile that you want to capture.

Look to see if you can add the numbers on top of two or more of your piles together to get the number on top of an adjacent opponent’s pile. If the piles add up to the exact number on an adjacent opponent’s pile, you can capture that pile. For example if you have a two and four pile next to a six pile, you can use those two piles to capture the six pile.

Capturing a pile with addition in Bing Crosby's Game Call Me Lucky — The red player has two piles touching the yellow eight pile. When you add the five and three piles together you get eight. This allows the red player to use addition to capture the yellow player’s pile.

When you capture a pile in this way, you will move all of the piles you used to the top of the pile you captured. You can choose which of your piles you want to place on top.

Capturing a pile with addition — The red player captured the yellow player’s pile. They decided to place the red five pile on top.

Drawing and Playing a Card in Bing Crosby’s Game Call Me Lucky

After you have completed any plays from the board, you will draw the top card from your draw pile. This is not optional. You must draw a card on each of your turns. Should the first player draw a Lucky 7 card on the first turn of the game, they will shuffle it back into the deck and draw another card. You will try to play the card you drew to the board. You can play a card in one of two ways.

Drawing a card in Bing Crosby's Game Call Me Lucky — The green player has drawn a four card from their pile. They will try to play the card to the board.

Playing a Card on a Pile

After you draw the card, you should first look to see if you have an opportunity to capture a pile with the card. Look at opponents’ piles that you have a card adjacent to. If the number on the card you drew matches the top card on any of these piles, you can play it directly on top of the pile capturing it.

Playing a card to a pile in Bing Crosby's Game Call Me Lucky — The green player has a pile touching a yellow player’s pile. As the number on top of the pile matches the number they drew, they can play the card they drew on top of the yellow pile.

Capturing a pile by playing a card on top of it — The green player played their four card on top of the yellow four card. The green player has captured the pile.

Playing a Card on a Space

If you cannot play your card on top of a stack of cards, you will look for a spot on the board that is the same number as the card you drew. You can play the card on any space that has a matching number on it. For example you can play a three card on any of the three spaces on the gameboard.

Playing a card to a space — The green player has decided to play their card directly on a four space on the gameboard.

Unable to Play a Card

Should you draw a card that you cannot play to a pile or the board itself, you will set the card aside. At the end of the game you will lose points for not being able to play the card.

End of Turn

After you have played the card you drew, your turn ends. Play then passes to the player on your left/clockwise.

Lucky 7 Card

The Lucky 7 card is unique in that it is wild.

When you draw a Lucky 7 card you will play it on top of one of the piles controlled by one of your opponents. You can pick any pile as it doesn’t have to match the seven. The pile also doesn’t need to be adjacent to one of your own piles. You cannot play the card on top of a pile that you already control though. The Lucky 7 card also can’t be played directly to the board. It has to be played on top of another card.

Using a Lucky 7 card in Bing Crosby's Game Call Me Lucky — The yellow player drew their Lucky 7 card. They found a large pile controlled by the green player that they would like to capture.

Using the Lucky 7 card to capture a pile — The yellow player places the Lucky 7 card on the pile to capture it. They will control the pile for the rest of the game since no player may capture a pile that has a Lucky 7 card on the top.

Once you play a Lucky 7 card on top of a pile, you control that pile for the rest of the game. Once a Lucky 7 card is on a pile, that pile can no longer be captured. It also can’t be used to help capture another pile.

Winning Bing Crosby’s Game Call Me Lucky

Bing Crosby’s Game Call Me Lucky ends when all of the players’ draw piles are exhausted and the last player completes their last turn.

Each player collects all of the piles from the gameboard whose top card matches their color.

End of Bing Crosby's Game Call Me Lucky — The game has ended. Each player takes all of the cards from the piles that their color is on top of. The yellow player takes the piles that have a yellow four, one, Lucky 7, and ten on top. The green player takes five piles, the red player takes three piles, and the blue player takes three piles.

Add up the value of all of the cards in the piles you collect. You will score points for every card in each pile that you collected even if the card doesn’t match your color.

You will then subtract the value of each card that you were unable to play on your turn.

Scoring in Bing Crosby's Game Call Me Lucky — These are the cards that the yellow player captured during the game. The cards on the left add up to 66 points. The yellow player was unable to play the one card on the right side. Therefore they score a total of 65 points in the game.

The player that scores the most points wins the game.

Bing Crosby’s Game Call Me Lucky FAQ

If you have any questions about how to play Bing Crosby’s Game Call Me Lucky, leave a comment below on this post. I will try to answer any questions asked as best and as quickly as possible.

Components

Gameboard
4 sets of cards (blue, green, red, yellow)
- 2 – 1s
- 2 – 2s
- 2 – 3s
- 2 – 4s
- 1 – 5
- 1 – 6
- 1 – Lucky 7
- 1 – 8
- 1 – 9
- 1 – 10
4 Card Holders
Instructions

Year: 1954 | Publisher: Parker Brothers

Genres: Abstract, Family

Ages: NA | Number of Players: 2-4 | Length of Game: 30 minutes

Difficulty: Light | Strategy: Light-Moderate | Luck: Moderate

For more board and card game rules/how to plays, check out our complete alphabetical list of card and board game rules posts.

Written By:

Eric Mortensen

Eric Mortensen is an owner and head writer on Geeky Hobbies since 2014. He is an avid board game player and collector with over 3,000 board and card games in his collection. Since 2014 he has written more than 1,100 board game how to play guides.