What is your favorite card game for two people and why? My girlfriend and I are looking to learn some good card games we can play with each other.
Magic: The Gathering.
Gin and Cribbage.
eta, oops you wanted reasons: Both are relatively easy to learn, but both take some strategy. And you can gamble sexual favors on the results. That way, you both win!!
Uno or Rat-a-Tat Cat.
**Purgatory Man **and I love playing cribbage, but I can’t really explain why. It’s fun, it makes us do elementary math in our heads, and it involves props, I guess.
I also like playing 2-handed Spades. It’s one of those games you can just play forever, allowing your scores to build up to 7 figures and beyond. You can easily carry on a conversation while you play, and all it requires is a deck of cards, a writing instrument, and a scrap of paper.
I always wanted to learn to play gin, but nobody ever wanted to learn to play it with me.
Scrabble Slam and Monopoly Deal are really fun and easy to learn. They’re cheap too - you can find them at Wal-Mart or Target for $5.
Magic: The Gathering is fun too, but can be difficult for beginners to learn if they don’t have an experienced player teaching them. Plus, it can get expensive.
Like notfrommensa, I’ll throw in votes for crib and gin. For the same reasons.
Also counting in crib can be fun in itself.
I’ll 3rd Cribbage for sexual favours.
Cribbage; I grew up with it. All the adults played it, and the kids watched until old enough (8 or so) to play.
Trumps. I even devised a solitaire version.
Race for the Galaxy is a great space-themed card game for 2 to 4 players.
Thanks for all the replies! I should have specified, though; we’re looking just for games that can be played with a standard deck of playing cards.
My granpap taught the whole family a card game called Casino, that all of us really enjoy. Really, most card games can’t really be played properly with two people at all.
I’ll echo cribbage. My father and I back when I was a kid could spend an entire Saturday afternoon playing it. I never got bored of it.
Unlike Gin, which while an enjoyable game, for some reason I can only play it in small doses (i.e. no more than 3 games in a sitting) before getting bored of it.
Two-handed spades isn’t bad, but I found there was a considerably bigger luck factor in it then in four-handed spades. I didn’t find the game as fun.
(Granted, cribbage is another “better lucky than good” game, but it’s really fun.)
I second Lost Cities and Balloon Cup and add Jambo. All three are published by Rio Grande Games.
Spit all the way!!! That game is more pyschological than poker!
My fiancee and I play cribbage like it’s going out of style. It’s a great game. We recently learned Pinochle, which is also really fun once you figure it out. In December we’re planning on teaching the 4 handed version to my sister and her husband.
At the moment, we’re trying to learn to play bridge, so we’ve been playing all four hands face up around the table and then doing our damnedest to set ourselves… 