Ultimate Book of Card Games: The Comprehensive Guide to More Than 350 Games

BOOK: Ultimate Book of Card Games: The Comprehensive Guide to More Than 350 Games
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The Comprehensive Guide

TO MORE THAN 350 GAMES

BY SCOTT McNEELY

ILLUSTRATIONS BY ARTHUR MOUNT

DEDICATION

This book is dedicated to Emmett McNeely,
so when he grows up he can beat the pants off his friends
playing most any card game that exists.

Contents

Dedication

Introduction

 

CHAPTER ONE Let the Games Begin

CHAPTER TWO Games for One Player

 

ACCORDION

ACES UP

ALHAMBRA

AMAZONS

ARCHWAY

AULD LANG SYNE

BABETTE

BAKER’S DOZEN

BARONESS

BELVEDERE

BIG BEN

BLACK HOLE

CALCULATION

CANFIELD

CARPET

CLOCK

CONGRESS

CRAZY QUILT

CRESCENT

CRIBBAGE SOLITAIRE

CRUEL

DECADE

DEUCES

DIPLOMAT

DUCHESS

EIGHT OFF

FLOWER GARDEN

FORTRESS

FORTY THIEVES

FOUR SEASONS

GATE

GAPS

GERMAN PATIENCE

GOLF

GRAND DUCHESS

GRANDFATHER

GRANDFATHER’S CLOCK

HAND

INTELLIGENCE

INTERREGNUM

INTRIGUE

JUBILEE

KING ALBERT

 

------- Klondike -------

LA BELLE LUCIE

LA CROIX D’HONNEUR

LABYRINTH

LEONI’S OWN

MARTHA

MAZE

MISS MILLIGAN

MONTE CARLO

MOUNT OLYMPUS

MRS. MOP

NAPOLEON’S SQUARE

NESTOR

NINETY-ONE

OCTAVE

OSMOSIS

PARALLELS

PATRIARCHS

PERSIAN PATIENCE

POKER SOLITAIRE

PUSS IN THE CORNER

PYRAMID

QUEEN OF ITALY

RED & BLACK

ROYAL COTILLION

ROYAL MARRIAGE

SALIC RULE

SCORPION

SEVEN DEVILS

SEVEN UP

SHAMROCKS

SIMPLE SIMON

SPIDER

ST. HELENA

STALACTITES

STONEWALL

SULTAN

TOURNEY

TOWER OF HANOI

TRI PEAKS

WINDMILL

YUKON

ZODIAC

CHAPTER THREE Games Especially for Two Players

BEZIQUE (TWO-HAND)

BURA

CASINO

CRIBBAGE

CUARENTA

GIN RUMMY

KLABERJASS

PIQUET

RUSSIAN BANK

SIXTY-SIX

SPITE & MALICE

OTHER VARIATIONS SUITABLE FOR TWO PLAYERS

CHAPTER FOUR Games Especially for Three Players

1,000

8-5-3

BIG THREE

FIVE HUNDRED

SEVEN UP

SKAT

OTHER VARIATIONS SUITABLE FOR THREE PLAYERS

CHAPTER FIVE Games Especially for Four Players

BARBU

BIG TWO

 

--------Hearts-------

THIRTEEN-CARD BRAG

TIEN LEN

TWENTY DOWN

OTHER VARIATIONS SUITABLE FOR FOUR PLAYERS

CHAPTER SIX Partnership Games

28

400

ALKORT

AUCTION FORTY-FIVE

BACK ALLEY

 

------- Bridge -------

CANASTA

EUCHRE

PEDRO

PINOCHLE

PISTI

ROOK

SPADES

WHIST

OTHER PARTNERSHIP GAME VARIATIONS

CHAPTER SEVEN Multiplayer Games

AGURK

BRISCOLA

BULLSHIT

BUSCA

FAN TAN

NAPOLEON

OH HELL

PALACE

PANGUINGUE

RUMMY

SETBACK

TOEPEN

TWENTY-FIVE

OTHER MULTIPLAYER GAME VARIATIONS

CHAPTER EIGHT Betting Games

TIPS FOR POKER VIRGINS

BACCARAT

BLACKJACK

GUTS

FIVE-CARD DRAW

FIVE-CARD STUD

SEVEN-CARD STUD

 

------- Texas Hold’em -------

7-27

THREE-CARD BRAG

CHAPTER NINE Games for Kids

AUTHORS

BEGGAR YOUR NEIGHBOR

BOODLE

CONCENTRATION

CRAZY EIGHTS

EGYPTIAN RATSCREW

GO FISH!

OLD MAID

 

------- Pig -------

POUNCE

PRESIDENT & POND SCUM

RIDE THE BUS

SLAPJACK

WAR

 

AUTHOR’S PICKS

GLOSSARY OF CARD TERMS

ALPHABETICAL LIST OF GAMES

 

Copyright

Introduction

You could make the argument that “playing cards” sounds mighty old fashioned— not unlike bingo, croquet, or sword fighting. In the age of the Internet, can any game played with mere cards be anything but outdated?

Find out for yourself by hosting a poker or card night and watch what happens. No phones, no television, no computers—just everybody having a good time together. And that’s the key word:
together
.

Playing cards is a massively social activity, whether you’re bluffing your way out of a bad Texas Hold’em hand or going toe-to-toe with friends in a heated game of Hearts. Cards are a catalyst, and their real power is their ability to draw friends, families, and even strangers together.

It’s a safe bet you’ve never heard of half the games covered in this book, and that’s half the joy of perusing the
Ultimate Book of Card Games.
Certainly cards can be a dull diversion used to pass the time when there’s nothing much better to do. But this is the rare exception to an otherwise inspired pantheon of such card games as Poker, Euchre, Bridge, Spades, Pinochle, Rummy, Blackjack, Spite & Malice, Brag, Klaberjass, Hearts, Canasta—the list of great games goes on and on.

While there is no single definition for what makes a game “great,” I’ve used two simple guidelines to select what games to include in the
Ultimate Book of Card Games
. The games in this book have withstood the test of time and are guaranteed to satisfy the card player’s most basic desire: to have a bit of fun.

—Scott McNeely

CHAPTER ONE
Let the Games Begin
A VERY BRIEF HISTORY OF CARDS

The earliest “cards”—actually domino tiles, played like cards—came from China around ad 960. Playing cards made their first appearance in Europe in the 1370s. Remarkably, these ancient European cards would be instantly recognizable today. They contained four suits, each headed by a king and two “marshals,” plus ten other cards, for a total of fifty-two cards. By 1480, the French had introduced the modern system of suits based on hearts, spades, clubs, and diamonds.

From the earliest times, cards have been associated with European aristocracy— they could afford hand-painted decks of cards and had leisure time to spare—as well as gamblers and lowlifes. Neither association is quite fair, because cards permeated all levels of society, with equal numbers of gambling and non-gambling games. The world of cards has always been diverse, from trick taking to melding, from Solitaire to multiplayer games, from massively complex games like Contract Bridge to absurdly simply ones like Indian Poker.

Poker and Panguingue were the first games to make serious inroads in the United States, along with Solitaire and its many variants. Poker and Panguingue were popular gambling games in the California goldfields from 1850 onward; Solitaire was an import from Victorian Britain.

By the early 1900s, in both the United States and Britain, the previously popular game of Whist was supplanted by various forms of Bridge. Bridge remained the most popular game in America well into the 1960s, followed by Rummy, Canasta, Solitaire, and Poker.

Poker has always been popular in the United States, but it wasn’t until the 1990s that the game truly took off. That’s largely due to Texas Hold’em and the invention of the in-table television camera. The camera (which lets a home audience see all the players’ cards in real time) transformed a slow and—let’s be honest—dull game for observers into an adrenaline-filled battle with millions of dollars at stake.

The Internet has breathed fresh life into many card games, with online forums dedicated to Hearts, Spades, Bridge, Solitaire, Poker—you name it. In a strange way, given the social nature of most games, cards are well suited to the Web 2.0’s social networks, and to dispersed groups of friends who crave an interpersonal activity to bring them together. If nothing else, cards have proven to be highly adaptable over the past eight hundred years. There’s no reason to believe the end of the card-playing era is anywhere in sight.

HOW TO USE THIS BOOK

The
Ultimate Book of Card Games
is a great resource. It contains hundreds of fascinating games to keep you entertained for months on end, and it makes a handsome addition to your gaming library.

What this book is
not
is a definitive guide to the games it covers. Do not follow this book zealously or take it too seriously. To do so would mean swimming upstream against the entire history of card games.

Card games are not pieces of legislation passed by a congress. They are not messages from on high. Card games are more like Darwin’s finches. They evolve. They mutate. Take your eye off a card game and—presto!—new rules are added and old ones discarded.

If you’ve heard of edmond hoyle, you might think he literally “wrote the book” on card games and their rules. nothing of the sort. hoyle did publish a book called
A Short Treatise on the Game of Whist
in 1742. however, his focus was on how to play—that is, how to win—not on documenting the rules, which he assumed readers already knew. more than 250 years after his death, hoyle would be surprised—unpleasantly so—by the dozens of books bearing his name and pretending to be a definitive guide to cards.

The reality is that ninety-nine percent of the world’s card games have no definitive rules. Bridge is the one exception: formal committees approve its rules. Every other game is in a continual state of flux and is played with variations from region to region, state to state, and country to country. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with this.

Disputes, when they arise, are the result of players relying on unspoken assumptions or following contradictory sets of rules. So use this book to discover
new games and learn how to play them, but don’t panic if you, your parents, grandparents, or friends use different rules or favor variations not covered in this book. That’s OK. It’s in the very nature of cards to be variable.

All we really ask is that you follow one basic piece of advice: Always review the rules of play before you deal a single card. Everybody at a table must follow the same set of rules, and everybody should know in advance what those rules are.

A note on terminology, too. We’ve included the most common gaming and card-playing terms in this book’s glossary. So when you see a word or phrase in bold italics—
blind bet
, for example—flip to the glossary for a definition.

CARD BASICS FOR FIRST-TIME PLAYERS

Here are the most important things you need to know if you’re new to card games. You can safely skip this section if you’ve played cards before.

SUITS & RANKS
A standard deck has fifty-two cards, divided equally into four suits called hearts (of hearts), spades (of spades), diamonds (of diamonds), and clubs (of clubs). The two jokers are not typically used. In each suit there are thirteen card rankings or ranks, from 2 to 10, plus a jack, queen, king, and ace. In most games, 2 is the lowest in rank, ace the highest (although in many games the ace also can be played as the lowest card, as in 5-4-3-2-A). Some games have their own peculiar ranking systems—for example, when 2s through 6s are removed from the deck, or when jacks rank higher than kings. Those ranking variances are outlined in the rules of play that are given for each game.

DEALING
Cards are usually dealt clockwise, starting with the person to the left of the dealer. Cards are always dealt face down, one at a time, unless otherwise stated in the rules.

GAMES, HANDS, ROUNDS & TURNS
Games are often made up of
hands
(sometimes called
deals
), in which all players compete. Points or scores earned in a hand typically count toward an overall game score. Hands are often broken into
rounds
, in which each active player is usually required to perform some action (play a card, discard, make a bet, etc.). Within each round, each player has his own specific
turn
, and it is considered rude for one player to perform an action (e.g., make a bet, fold, etc.) when it is not his turn.

TRICKS
Some games—such as Hearts, Spades, Bridge, etc.—are played in tricks. A
trick
comprises all the cards played in a single round (one card from each player). So in a Hearts game with five players, a single trick contains five cards. In Bridge, a trick typically contains four cards.

TRUMP & NO TRUMP
Many trick-taking games also rely on
trump
. A trump is a suit (e.g., hearts, spades, diamonds, clubs) that outranks all the other suits for the duration of that hand. For example, if spades are trump, it means that a spade will beat any other card, even if that other card is of a higher rank—a lowly 2 of spades will beat A of hearts or any other high card that isn’t a spade. If two trumps are played in the same trick, the higher-ranking trump wins.
No trump
means that for the duration of the hand, no suit is trump.

BIDDING
In games that include bidding, players must estimate how many total tricks they think they can win. Whoever bids the highest amount typically wins the bid and therefore earns the right to score points, determine the trump, play the first card, etc. Keep in mind that table talk (communicating with your partner about strategy, about your cards, or about anything remotely related to the current hand) is universally outlawed in games that feature bidding.

TIPS FOR HOSTING YOUR OWN POKER NIGHT OR CARD NIGHT

Here are five of the most important things to consider when hosting a home poker or card game. Ignore them at your peril!

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