Sabacc using a regulation 52 playing card deck

I'm new around here, so bear with me, but I hope this will help all parties involved.

Sabacc using a regulation 52 playing card deck

Sabacc, Star Wars version of Poker. Most popular card game in the
Galaxy. The object, to be the player that cam make a hand closest to
+23 or -23 without going over +23 or under -23.

Over the years, I have seen many people make available artwork for
printing your own Sabacc deck. However, in some cases, this is
impractical (more so if you are trying to conserve your ink). I have
even seen people post directions on turning a Tarot card deck, into a
Sabacc deck. This too also proved impractical, seeing not everyone
has access to a place where you can buy the cards.

So, it got me thinking, "Is there a way to turn a regulation 52 playing card
deck into a Sabacc deck?" I searched online and found only one solution.
While the solution worked, the game was hardly what I would call Sabacc.
So I started to think I could combine two regulations decks and that would
work. However, I wanted to stick to using a standard 52 card deck. The
problem being, cards valued from 11-15 could not be used, and if you
eliminated them, you would have to ajust the value of the face cards.

Then I realized, that wasn't the problem, that was the solution! Now the rules needed
to be adapted for the fact that the cards in value from 11-15 were no
longer there. Then it hit me. Since no card is worth higher than
10 now, no face card could have a value lower than -10. Which would
make a -23 pure sabbac virtually impossible, which meant the target needed to be
lowered. So I thought, "If I eliminated the cards 11-15 from the game,
and also did the same to the face cards, lower the target by 10"

So now the target was +13 or -13, which is attainable on both sides. I
gave the game a test run, and it worked! So, without further adu, here
are the directions on constructing a Sabacc deck, using a regulation
52 playing card deck!

Equiment: One regulation deck of 52 playing cards. Plastic Coated
suggested, a pen to mark on the face cards their new values (optional)

Take a regulation 52 playing card deck, and remove the 12 face cards
from it. You should be left with 40 cards Ace through 10 in every suit. These
are the + cards. Note that the Aces are worth +1 now, not +15.

Now for the tricky part. You are going to turn the 12 face cards,
into face cards of the Sabacc deck as follows:

Jack of Hearts and Jack of Diamonds: Balance (worth -1)
Queen of Hearts and Queen of Diamonds: Queen of Air and Darkness (worth -2)
King of Hearts and King of Diamonds: Demise (worth -3)
Queen of Clubs and Queen of Spades: Moderation (worth -4)
King of Clubs and King of Spades: The Evil One (worth -5)
Jack of Clubs and Jack of Spades: The Star (worth -7)

Take the two jokers, add them to the deck. These jokers are "The Idiot" (worth 0)

With your deck now constructed, play Sabacc as you normally would, only
with the target being +/- 13.

 

Welcome to the boards! I think I might try that some time...