My grandmother loved to play cards and always had a deck in her purse and a rubber band or two around her wrist, just in case she came across a loose deck. Two of the games I remember her teaching us kids were Muggins and Wagon Wheel Rummy.
Oddly enough, today I hate Hate HATE it when I’m hanging out with a group of friends and somebody says, “Hey, let’s play [X obscure card game that I don’t know]! We love it! It’s really easy, we’ll teach it to you!!” Great. First they have to explain the rules and all the quirks and “strategy.” Then they have to help you play your hand (or whatever) for a few rounds. Then they show you where you went wrong, and we gotta play a few more times until you understand it. All for a game that I’ll never play again. I don’t like how the conversation goes from varied interesting topics and stories to concentrating on a card game. I just don’t find it relaxing; more like irritating. I’d rather play something like Trivial Pursuit or something that lets the players interact on a more conversational level, instead of staring at cards in your hand. (I’m reminded of the family reunion at which quite a few people hadn’t seen each other in years; the main entertainment was bingo. Yes, let’s all stare at a card with numbers on it for an hour – no talking or we can’t hear the caller – and then all go home.)
Nothing against people who like to get together and play a card game they all know and enjoy; I just don’t like being dragged into one that I don’t. Just not a card player, I guess.
I love tyzicha… or would if I could find anyone to play it with anymore. Few people have ever even heard of it, which is a shame.
It’s a russian game I think, related to skat and sheepshead. (The name is pronounced tizzy-chah.) The play structure is fairly simple… dealing, bidding for the widow and the chance to lead first, passing on cards, then trick play and declaring marriages for points, and to establish trump suits. But the details of play can get surprisingly subtle when you’ve got a few players together, not to mention the agony of bidding on a blind widow in competition to someone else, and knowing that those three cards face down on the table might mean triumphant victory, or humiliating defeat.
In my family we mostly play Euchre. (I’m from Ohio.) Back when we lived there my parents used to go to 16-person Euchre parties every few weeks. Also, senior year of high school, we played Euchre every day on our lunch hour.
I’ve tried Pinochle and a little bridge and it’s just too confusing. I don’t exactly have a long attention span, so Euchre is the tricks game I can play without completely flubbing it. Also hearts, but more often on the computer than in real life.
There are slight variations (especially the ranking of the suits), but the game is the same. In the Polish variant that I know, the ranks from high to low are Hearts, Diamonds, Clubs, and Spades, although I’ve seen variants in which the black suits are more valuable than the reds.
While there are some similarities between 1000 and games like Skat and Schafkopf, (they are all point-trick taking games), the game itself is more closely related to games like 66, Bauernschnapsen, and even Pinochle (marriages all being key features of these games lacking in Skat and Schafkopf).
A while back I learned a great variant of Hearts called "Complex Hearts." (Scroll down a tad). Alas, I have yet to find three other people to play it with.
When visiting my grandparents in Prince Edward Island, the game we played was “Auction 45”. My dear Grandmother (beloved cook and baker, maker of the world’s best strawberry jam, nurser of bruises and cuts) would turn absolutely cut-throat at the card table. She’d have been thrown out of Vegas as being a card-sharp.
But she was true to the old Island traditions; absolutely no card playing was allowed on Sundays.
Reminds me of when I played Spades during my lunch hour at work. For the longest time, I thought it was just modified High/Low (H/L/2/A as the high spades) but one day…“Oh, we play Cutthroat.”
Gee, thanks, fellas. André can find himself a new partner.
Yes, I ditto that! And frankly, I seem to forget how to play any card game that I haven’t played for a while. I’ve been taught to play Hearts, Canasta, and Gin Rummy, but I don’t remember much about any of them.
The only game I remember without a problem is poker. I learned draw poker as a teen, and have picked up Texas hold’em from the various TV shows.
It depends. You play enough cards and you pick up that there’s only really a handful of basic card game families, with each culture and region having their own spin on the same concepts. Personally, I’m always on the look out for new games. Unfortunately, nobody, and I mean nobody, around here plays cards for fun anymore.
When you play Pitch, who gets the point for low- the person who played it, or the person who captures it? My family does the former, but the Hoyle Card Games computer version does the latter. It changes the playing strategies quite a bit.
We play as pulykamell said, it’s only worth a point if you capture it.
Reading this thread reminds me of another variation in Hearts that’s in our house rules - if you hit exactly 100 points, your score goes back down to zero.
I was trying to try this with a group of friends tonight, but haven’t been able to find an answer to the most important question: How are the cards dealt when playing with six players (“Tichu Tientsin”)?
