Card Games For Dummies
Overview
The perfect book for when you’re ready to move beyond 52-card pickup
Feeling rummy? Ready to bridge the gap? In the mood to go fish? Card Games For Dummies is your source for rules, strategy, and fun. You’ll learn everything you need to know to play and win at your family’s favorite games, plus a bunch of others that are probably new to you. If you’re the gambling kind, you can get started with poker, blackjack, and other casino favorites, right here. This handy guide takes card
game enthusiasm to the next level and explains the tips and tricks that can turn game night into some serious competition.
- Learn the official rules for all your favorite card games
- Discover strategies for winning at bridge, poker, hearts, and many more
- Play easy games that are perfect for the whole family
- Get started in the world of online card gaming
Card Games For Dummies will whet your appetite for play. Start shuffling!
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About The Author
Barry Rigal is an internationally recognized Bridge player who has won countless competitions. They include the North American Bridge Championships as well as the Camrose Trophy Home International Series, which he has won five times. Barry is also the author of the previous editions of Card Games For Dummies.
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card games for dummies
CHEAT SHEET
The variety of card games means that you can find one to suit most any situation. Most card players are familiar with some type of poker, though they may need to be reminded of how the hands are ranked. You can play some card games as long as all the players are happy to continue; others end at a particular score, and all are made more enjoyable when players adhere to card-game etiquette.
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Euchre is an excellent card game, simple in concept but with a high degree of subtlety in the play. The game also offers myriad variations, because it can be played with any number of players and as a long or short game.
To play Euchre, you need the following:
Four playersA standard deck of 52 cards: You don't need all the cards, however.
General Card Games
When playing Rummy, you can only put down a combination during your turn. The correct timing is to pick up a card from the stock or discard pile, put down your meld, and then make your discard. The advantage of putting down a combination before you’re ready to go out completely is that you reduce your exposure if you lose the game.
Card games are meant to be fun and entertaining and paying attention to the do’s and don’ts of card-playing can help you keep your enjoyment factor high and your frustration level low.
Card-playing do’s include:
Determine the rules of the game before play begins. Most games have several variations, and you need to iron out the rules before you start.
The variety of card games means that you can find one to suit most any situation. Most card players are familiar with some type of poker, though they may need to be reminded of how the hands are ranked. You can play some card games as long as all the players are happy to continue; others end at a particular score, and all are made more enjoyable when players adhere to card-game etiquette.
Discarding is a critical part of how you play Canasta; if the discard pile grows large, one false discard can be disastrous. Err on the side of caution by throwing out what you’re sure your opponents don’t want. Do so by watching what they throw away and by what they don’t pick up from the discard pile.
Unfreezing the deck with the initial meld
The discard pile is automatically frozen for your side at the start of the game until your team makes its initial meld; that does not mean you can’t use it — but you can only use it under specific circumstances.
General Card Games
Accurate bidding is key to winning a game of Spades. And in Spades, your success at bidding rests largely on knowing how to value your cards:
You count all aces as being worth a trick to start. No surprise there.
Count kings as worth about two-thirds of a trick, unless you also have the ace in that suit. Obviously, you can’t bid for fractions of a trick, but the point is to add on something to your sure tricks for each king.
Canasta has some unique rules, but it's still a fun, competitive card game. Just like other aspects of the game, there are special rules that pertain to winning (or finishing) a Canasta game. Here's what you need to know to end a game.
Going out
You can’t get rid of all your cards and go out until your team makes a Canasta.
Spades is traditionally a game for four players, played in partnership (with the partners sitting opposite each other). The players take turns playing out one card from their hands clockwise around the table. You must play a card in whichever suit is played first (or led) if you can, which is called following suit.
Beginning a card game is generally pretty straightforward — you deal the proscribed number of cards to the players. However, ending a card game can be a little different. Some games continue until a player reaches a certain score, others require a specific number of deals. The following list of popular card games tells you that you keep playing until .
In a Euchre game, after the cards are dealt and you pick up your hand, you get a chance to make your bid. Everyone sees what card gets turned over for the trump suit and each player gets the chance to bid to take three or more tricks with that suit as the trump suit. If all players refuse, the bidding goes into its second phase.
Anyone who tells you that they know the best card games is either a fool or exceptionally arrogant. But, it is possible to offer a selection according to the needs of the players, so here goes!
Best cards games based on a specific number of players
For one player: Accordion and Poker Patience if you’re short on space; La Belle Lucie if you can spread out
For two players: Gin Rummy, Spite and Malice, and Cribbage
For three players: Pinochle and Ninety-nine
For four players: Bridge, Euchre, and Spades
For five to eight players: Hearts, Poker, and Oh, Hell!
In Euchre, a player with a particularly good hand can raise the stakes by opting to play the hand alone. The player who selects the trump suit has this option. As soon as you indicate your intention of going alone, your partner puts his cards face-down, for this hand only, and the game becomes three-handed.
A hand with the top three trump cards (Jack of Spades, Jack of Clubs, Ace of Spades, for example) is often a sure thing for going alone, especially if you have an off-suit ace.
In a game of Hearts, after you pick up and sort your cards, you get to pass three of your cards to another opponent. The passing stage of a Hearts game gives you a chance to unload some cards that you think may score points or to get rid of a particular suit, thereby strengthening your chances of dumping high-scoring cards on someone else, or of discarding danger cards in another suit at the appropriate moment.
Gin rummy is very similar to regular rummy, but gin has some additional wrinkles that make it a more interesting and challenging game.To play gin rummy, you need the following:
Two players: If more than two people want to play, you may want to send the extras out for ice cream or a walk.
A standard deck of 52 cards; no jokers are allowed in the gin house.
Go Fish is one of the most popular children's card games! So head to the waterin’ hole, — you’re about to go fishin’ fer sets (four cards of the same kind). To play Go Fish, you need the following:
At least three players
A standard deck of 52 cards
Each player gets ten cards from the dealer. You pretend as you deal out the full deck that you have one more player than you really do.
Old Maid is a card game that allows you to keep card strategy and psychology simple, making it an ideal game for younger children. All you need to play Old Maid is the following:
At least three players: There is no real upper limit, if you have enough decks of cards.
One or more standard decks of 52 cards, with three queens removed: Use a single deck of cards for up to six players.
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Rummy is a card game in which you try to improve the hand that you’re originally dealt. You can do this whenever it’s your turn to play, either by drawing cards from a pile (or stock) or by picking up the card thrown away by your opponent and then discarding a card from your hand.
Slapjack involves physical agility rather than verbal dexterity and memory, so make sure the players involved are active and eager. Young children can play this game if they can tell the difference between a jack and a king or queen. Assemble the following items to play Slapjack:
Two or more players. A maximum of six is probably sensible or too many collisions may result at home plate.
Get ready for a fast and furious game! Snap is all about mental reaction time, and one of the few games in which luck plays no part at all. To play Snap, you need the following:
Two or more players. There is no formal upper limit, but if you play with more than six players, the neighbors may complain about the noise.
As its alternative name suggests, Spit is a card game where fast reactions are critical. In fact, Spit is rare in that the players don’t take turns in sedate fashion to follow suit in turn. Instead, each player makes the effort to play as quickly as possible, not waiting for his or her opponent.
To play Spit, you need:
Two players
One deck of cards
Keep a special deck for this game; after one session your cards may never be the same again.
War is a great card game for young children. The object is to acquire all the cards, which you can do in different ways. To play War, you need the following:
Two players
A standard deck of 52 cards
Start by dealing out the deck one card at a time, face-down, so that each player gets 26 cards. Keep your cards in a pile and don’t look at them.
After the dealer reveals the starting card (and claims his 2 points, if possible), both players have their first serious chance to score points. During the play of the cards, you take turns playing one card from each of your hands. Your goal is to form certain combinations of cards that score you points.
During gameplay, you must keep track of the cumulative value of the cards that have been played.
Poker may be the best-known card game, and if you’re going to play, you need to know how the hands rank. The following details the various Poker hands from the highest-ranking to lowest, along with the odds of catching such a hand:
Royal straight flush: The top five cards (A-K-Q-J-10) in one of the four suits.
In a Cribbage game, after you finish playing out the cards, you pick up your hand (the cards you’ve been placing on the table in front of you) and move on to the main phase of scoring. For this scoring phase, both players treat the starter as a fifth card to supplement their hands for pairs, sequences, and combinations of 15, but during this phase, you can’t use your opponent’s cards as you can during the play of the cards.
Scoring in a game of Spades follows a predictable path — but beware the sting in the tail that comes from going set, or from underbidding, and racking up the overtricks!
Dealing with undertricks
If you fall short in your bid, no matter by how many tricks, you lose ten times the value of your bid. For example, if you bid 10 and fail, you lose 100 points.
When playing Hearts, at the end of the hand, each player collects all the cards in the taken tricks, and the arithmetic begins. Unlike other card games, Hearts doesn’t tax your math skills unduly. Each player gets 1 point per heart, for a total of 13 penalty points possible in each hand.
The Queen of Spades costs you 13 points on her own.
Beggar My Neighbor, a card game suitable for small children that's also known as Beat Your Neighbor Out of Doors and Strip Jack Naked, is a very simple game, requiring no strategy or planning at all. The objective of the game is to win all the cards from the other players.
To play Beggar My Neighbor, you need the following:
Two to six players: You can play with more than six players in a pinch.
General Card Games
The first meld for each partnership must be worth a certain number of points before you can put it down. Here’s the bad news first: Not only does this requirement apply for the first hand, but also for all subsequent hands, and the task gets more arduous as the game goes on. The good news: When you make the first meld, you lift the load from your partner’s back simultaneously.
General Card Games
In Canasta, the 3s are treated differently from all other cards, and the red 3s are not treated the same as the black 3s. Read on for the special rules regarding 3s in a Canasta game.
Laying down the red 3s
The red 3s are like bonus cards — they play no major part in the strategy of the game, but they can score your side some extra points if you’re lucky enough to draw them.
What could be simpler than Eights? Until you add a few complexities, Eights is not a challenging game.
To play Eights, you require the following:
Two or more playersAt least one standard 52-card deck of cards: No jokers are used in most versions of Eights, but you may well need at least one more deck of cards, because the game can be adapted to large numbers of players.
In a game of Hearts, the player on the dealer’s left starts by playing whatever non-scoring card he likes. In Hearts, the cards rank in regular fashion, from ace to 2, with the ace being high. You must follow suit (play a card in the suit led) if you can, and if you can’t, you can play whatever you want.
Each player throws in a card, and whoever plays the highest card in the suit led wins the trick.
Hearts is a game of skill — to a certain extent. You rely on luck to get good cards dealt to you, but strategic playing and a good memory make an enormous difference in this game. Keeping track of the cards played in each suit helps you to master this game, and practice and experience have no substitute.
Hearts is a cutthroat game, meaning that you normally don’t play in partnerships, no matter the number of players involved.
When playing Spades, the play of the cards goes clockwise, starting with the player to the dealer’s left. He puts a card face-up in the middle of the table, and then all other players contribute a card in turn.
If you have no cards in the suit led, you can play anything you like; if you play a spade on the lead of a heart, diamond, or club, you win the trick because spades trump the other suits.
After each new hand is dealt in a game of Spades, starting with the player on the dealer's left, each player bids any number of tricks between 0 and 13. The combined total for each side is the number of tricks that the partnership needs to take to fulfill its contract for the hand.
Each partnership registers its tricks as a unit — it doesn’t matter whether you or your partner takes the tricks unless a bid for nil has been made by one of the players; the important thing is that your side gets them.
To win at Cribbage, you have to score points. In a game of Cribbage, you can maximize your opportunities to score points during play by focusing on a few things, such as choosing what cards to put in the crib, starting the play with the right card, and thinking ahead.
Choosing the right crib cards
The points scored in the crib go to the dealer, and the pone (non dealer) and dealer score points for making pairs, combinations of 15, and sequences in the crib.
When playing rummy, the first player to be able to put all but one of the cards in their hand into combinations (places all their cards on the table) wins the hand. This is called, "going out." You discard your remaining card as you go out, usually having made the others into one combination of four and one combination of three, if you're playing 7-card rummy.
At the end of a hand of Canasta, as soon as one player goes out, the scoring starts. Add up the points for the bonuses and melds and subtract the negative points from that score.The bonuses you may be eligible for are as follows:
You get a 100-point bonus for going out.
You get a 200-point bonus for going out concealed, which means going out without first putting down any melds.
One reason for canasta’s widespread popularity is its use of wild cards, which make the game high scoring and unpredictable. Canasta is also one of the few partnership games (other than Bridge and Euchre) where the players can work in unison, although it also functions perfectly well as a two- or three-handed game.
Cribbage is a game of numbers. You collect points by combining cards together to make runs, or scoring combinations. The mathematics is simple, but cribbage is a game of strategy and tactics. Sometimes you try to score points, sometimes you try to stop your opponent from scoring; every game is subtly different.
Euchre is an excellent social card game, simple in concept but with a high degree of subtlety in the play. To play Euchre, you need the following:
Four players: Two teams, two players to a team.
A standard deck of 52 cards: Take out the ace through the 9 in each suit, making a deck of 24 cards for the game.
The object of Canasta is to pick up cards and fit them into groupings. You score points for the groupings, or melds, so the more melds, the merrier. The first team to score 5,000 points wins, and if both teams hit 5 grand on the same hand, the team with the higher score wins.
Making melds
Melds are combinations of three to seven or more cards of the same rank.
Gin Rummy is very similar in aim to regular Rummy, but Gin has some additional wrinkles that make it a more interesting and challenging game.To play Gin Rummy, you need the following:
Two players: Gin Rummy is for two players only, so if more than two people want to play, you may want to send the extra people out for ice cream or a walk.
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