One can play with one player per square (7), Or can double up (14); triples (21) and quadruples (28) versions are played as more people join. When the game was played in the late 1970s and early 1980s the only lawful play was that identified at (1) above. If a player could not lawfully play the ball after the first bounce in his square (and at that time the squares were indeed square-shaped and measured about 1.5 to 2 metres from corner to corner) then he was demoted. Also at this time, the names of the squares were not fixed – save for the King square – although frequent references to Queen, Jack, 10 and so on (as per a suit in a pack of cards) were made informally. There was no fixed number of squares although the normal number was 6 (in a 3x2 formation); 8 was not infrequent and larger numbers could be chosen to avoid long queues of 'slaves', who would wait to enter 'Rabies' after being demoted before players began to double-up in squares.