Pinochle
Hearts
Spades
Canasta
Euchre and Rummy here, with a little bit of War, Slap Jack, and Crazy 8’s thrown in (My kids’ favorites).
The game is Phase 10. My wife and her family are all huge fans of the game. We sometimes play with just the two of us, but it’s a lot more fun with more people.
My all-time favorite card game is a German one called Skat. A group of us who enjoyed trick-taking games, but had difficulty finding a fourth hand, decided to learn this from a book. It took us about six hours to get the basic mechanics of the game down, along with its somewhat complex bidding and scoring system, but once we got a feel for the game and the ability to judge hand strength, we were pretty damn good.
For two players, my favorite is cribbage. It has just the right combination of skill and luck to make it exciting without being too cerebral. Perfect pub game. Otherwise, if I’m in the mood for a bit more of a thinking man’s game, there’s the French game of Piquet. A fun, fun game and arguably the most skillful two-hander, but it’s very difficult to find anyone who plays.
As for four handers, I like hearts, pitch, and bid whist (a game I only recently discovered watching TVONE’s Celebrity Bid Whist Throwdown IV). I’m partial to trick-taking games, and, even more so, point trick-taking games.
I play, or at least I used to play. I work for an engineering firm, and the precision (anality) of the game evidently was appealing to the engineers. I got to be a reasonable player, and that was usually good enough. However, I never made it to the next level; you really have to be a bit creative and inspired to be a good player. Try a local Adult Ed program that offers enrichment classes; they may offer a beginning class and may know where local bridge groups meet.
When a French nobleman asked an acquaintance whether he played bridge, and the answer was “Non”, he exclaimed, “What a lonely old age you reserve for yourself!”
Okay, he really asked about whist; bridge is a relatively modern game. Bridge is very much like whist, but a bit more scientific; after the auction, the successful bidder’s partner tables his/her cards for all to see. It is complex, and therein lies its appeal. It seems to be too much to learn at one time, but so is the alphabet. Make like a first grader; break the task down into small components, and master those individually. Just like learning to read, it is time well spent IMHO.
Then give me a call; no one here plays bridge anymore.
Euchre does get a bit boring quickly, but if you like the basic idea of Euchre, you can always move up to a game like 500, which is an extension of Euchre and Australia’s national card game.
I had the same problem with spades–got bored of it quickly. I found that Bid Whist has similar mechanics, but much more variety of play. Oddly enough, I still find hearts enjoyable.
The actual cardplay in bridge is fairly simple. It plays like many other trick-taking games. However, it looks like you haven’t played much of these, so perhaps the best introduction would be to learn a simple bidding and trick-taking game like spades first.
The difficult part of bridge is evaluating the strength of your hand and accurately communicating that information through the use of bidding conventions to your partner, then figuring out the optimum bid, if any. The cardplay itself is skillful, too, but many of the techniques–ruffing, pitching, drawing trumps, etc.–can be found in most other trick-taking games.
I like Cribbage, Gin Rummy, and Euchre. Also, poker of various types. With the kids or when we want a “light” game for a group we will play Village Idiot or another game that I do not know the name of where you have one card and have to decide to trade with the player to your left or not and try not to end up with the lowest card.
To steal an expression from Ambrose Bierce, Pinochle is “a game played with cards to some unknown purpose”. 
I played Canasta back in grade school–one of my teachers taught several of us to play–but haven’t played since. I only play blackjack at casinos…and they’ve mostly gotten too touchy about the “counting” thing.
Really, the only things I play now tend to be the “special deck” things the OP discounted–Rook, Phase 10, Skipbo, and the like–and that pretty much only when I’m hanging out with my family (my niece, in particular, loves playing cards). We enjoy all the potential for messing with each other in games like this.
I absolutely LOVE spoons and have the battle scars to prove it, but haven’t played it in years. I play Hold 'Em pretty regularly these days and played lots of hearts and spades back in college.
Has anyone heard of Priscilla? It involves one deck per person and it has something to do with getting the cards in sequence as quickly as possible. We played it on vacation a long time ago and I’ve since forgotten how. Google didn’t help.
Rummy 5000
Cribbage
Gin
Penny-ante Poker
Hearts
Spades
Scat (aka 31)
Spite & Malice
Bridge (computer-only; still having trouble working out how to bid and no need to learn how to keep score)
Bullshit (if in a large enough group)
Crazy 8’s (unless an Uno deck is handy)
Hearts is easy, once you learn to keep track of which cards have been played. Same with Spades, with the addition of learning how to bid.
Skywatcher’s Guide to Spades Bidding for Beginners
Assuming straight Spades (no high/low, no cutthroat):[ul]One for each Ace.
[li]One for each Ace-King combination (unless you have more than four cards in that suit and it’s not spades).[/li][li]One for having only two cards in any suit except spades (if you have one spade that’s not an Ace).[/li][li]Two for having only one card in any suit except spades (if you have two spades that aren’t Aces).[/li][li]Alternatively, if your hand is full of low cards you could bid Nil and try not to take any tricks.[/ul][/li]
Examples:
AK98742 
73 ¨ 42 
76 Bid:5.
AK5 AKQT7 ¨ A AK54 Bid:7-you don’t have enough spades to support the solo ¨ and the K♥ is likely to be trumped.
T53 T853 ¨ J632 T7 Bid:Nil. Sure, you could probably get one by trumping but your team could get 100 if you’re successful in avoiding capturing tricksThere’s also the “Blind 6” (i.e.: bidding 6 before looking at your cards) and “Double Nil” (same thing but instead of trying for 6, you’re trying for nothing). The former isn’t particularly common and I’ve only encountered the latter when playing against a computer. These bids are very risky and net lots of points if successfuly completed. Blind 6 yields 120; Double Nil, 200.
Most groups I’ve played in require at least a minumum bid of 3 (called “board”) for each team. “Going board” means your team bids 3. The only time I haven’t encounterd the “board” rule is when playing against a computer. Another common team bid is the “10 for 2”, meaning the team nets 200 points if the bid is met.
High/Low removes two deuces and addes a pair of jokers, one designated “high” and one designated “low”. The high joker beats the low joker, and both beat the Ace.
Cutthroat Spades removes the rule in which a spade cannot lead the play (i.e.: be the first card on the table) until one is used to tump another suit.
Holy crap. Someone other than me knows this game?
Yeah, Whist is my family’s “official card game”. We play rounds and rounds of it on vactaion. Although, I looked up the official rules once and they were significantly different from the version my family plays.
I haven’t played cards in ages but that was always the highlight of visiting my Grandparents. We’d have supper then get out the double deck of cards for a good game of Rummy or Canasta. When I lived with them, depending on who was visiting, we’d play Hearts also. I can’t remember how to play Canasta now though, and hearts is a dimming memory.
Crib is best played sitting at a picnic table with a fire in the pit behind you, a mug of coffee next to your hand and the lantern turned up so you can see your cards in the gloaming.
I wouldn’t mind playing some poker, watching the tournies on tv means I think I have the basics down but I’m not about to go out betting. Blackjack is my game when I go to the casino (which is rarely, but I find my money lasts longer at the table than at the slots).
I need to find someone to play cards with. Either that or a good computer game that I can play!
That should be “if your hand is full of low cards and few spades…”
I play bridge (the duplicate version which minimises bad luck), and hold’em poker (but only v computers!).
Here’s a recent bridge hand I enjoyed (x = card below a 10):
S A
H xx
D KQxx
C AKQxxx
Me partner
1C 1S
2D* 4D
4NT** 5H***
7D
*‘reverse’, showing a strong hand
** ‘Blackwood’ asking for Aces
*** showing 2 Aces
Partner had
S QJxxx
H Ax
D AJxxx
C x
Trumps broke 3-1 (2-2 would be a laydown), but clubs were 4-2, so two ruffs established them. We scored 2140 points!
My grampap taught all of his many decendants to play a two-player game called Casino. Roughly, you’re trying to capture the most cards, and the most point cards, for points. Play continues until one player amasses 30 points. Grampap almost always won, due largely to his knack for memorizing every card that had ever been played. I think it’s the best two-player game I know of.
B. S. is another favorite, of course. But enough other folks have mentioned it that I assume I don’t need to say more.
And another one not yet mentioned is Egyptian Rat Screw. The object is to end with all of the cards. Play is mostly luck, except there are certain situations where you’re supposed to slap the card pile. Whenever this happens, whoever’s hand is on the bottom takes the whole stack. One nice feature is that anyone in the room can join a game already in progress, by slapping in. One group I used to play with had a house rule, “No weapons first round”, which gives you an idea of how the game usually winds up.
I like hearts but only with my family because everyone has different rules. No matter how much you check beforehand, there’s always some variation they have that is so alien (to you) that you haven’t even thought of bringing it up and it always causes strife and confusion in the first round.
Okay, so maybe it’s only the first round and then you’re all clear, right? True, but I have spent hours and hours playing with my family with one set of rules and really find it hard to switch to different systems. For instance, in our rules if you can’t follow suit you have to play a heart or the queen of spades if you have them whereas I’ve met others who say you can throw in any card you choose. This changes so much tactically I just can’t deal with it.
This is definitely “non-standard” but of course, your family can choose to play by whatever “house rules” you want.
Personally I can’t understand why you like this rule. To me the most fun thing about Hearts is developing targets and vendettas, saving up those hearts and “The B*tch” for “the bunny” (the person with the lowest score) or for that extra special person who’s been so annoying all night. Or to avoid giving to someone who would end the game (go over 100 points) when you are not currently the winner.
Or just to hold on to hearts to give to someone who doesn’t have on yet, to keep someone from shooting the moon. It is much, much easier to “shoot the moon” if everyone has to play point cards when they can’t follow suit… You just run a long suit. If you play “2 of clubs leads” (which is standard) it’s even easier: just get dealt or passed AKQ-long of clubs, you win the lead as cheaply as you can, run the suit until everyone has played out their point cards, then cash whatever hearts you have: voila, instant moon.
Anyway, sorry to hijack this thread into “whining about Hearts variants”, I unfortunately have a lot to say on this subject. I’ll stop now. (I can’t exactly point the finger at someone else’s preference for “non-standard” variants anyway, since I prefer “eldest hand (left of dealer) makes opening lead” and “first trick blood”, i.e. a “pure” trick taking game, while Standard Hearts mandates the C2 leading and no points on the first trick.)
Just like I said, because I’ve just always played that way. Not a great reason, I’ll admit but the rest of your post does show really nicely that changing one rule makes for completely different tactics.
You see, I’m quite happy to play a new card game and be bad at it because I’m a learner, but to do badly at a game I am quite good at I find annoying.
Have to say, though, it’s still quite tricky to shoot the moon even with my family’s rules. You don’t often get a suit that’s long enough to make it straightforwardly easy.
And then of course there’s the times when you do have that long suit but the idiot you are playing against announces, too late, that they do not have the shoot the moon rule. Argh! :mad:
You see, only with family.