Category: CARD GAMES

Card games that are popular are typically known by many people, but most people fail to realize that even though they are similar, in the sense that they use playing cards and a standard deck, card games can be about as different as a car is from a tricycle.

Today’s two games that we are going to take a look at are bridge and poker. Both are very popular card games, typically played by at least four people, even though you could play poker with fewer. What are the differences between the two games, what sets them apart?

Poker is a Game of Bluffing and Psychology

Poker is a game where you want to bluff your way out of a situation, no matter the hand that you have. If your hand is either good or bad, you don’t want to let anyone know what you have, or do you? A bad hand and a solid smile might be better, who knows? Poker plays out in such a way that nobody knows what’s going on, and you can only guess by looking at the faces and expressions of the opposing players.

Body language skills, understanding what someone is saying without opening their mouths is a very important skill to learn in poker. 

However, the game is also a game of entropy, where you don’t know most of the cards until every hand has played. Even when most people fold, you still are left with guesses and entropy, which makes it much more of a game of chance, rather than skill.

Reading expressions is a very important skill for playing poker.

Bridge is About Partnerships

Bridge is a game where you partner up with a person and everyone is dealt 13 cards. The goal of the game is to beat the other partnership. As the game unfolds, more and more cards are being revealed as the bids go by. By the time all the hands are played, everyone knows all the cards that were in play, which makes bridge more of a game of skill than a game of chance, compared to poker.

Where in one game, your advantage is bluffing and guessing, in the other, namely bridge, you can always get out of a sticky situation by playing the cards that you were dealt with in the best possible way. Almost no hand in bridge can immediately lead to a loss. This is why the game is played by so many people. 

Both Games Are Games of Entropy

Both bridge and poker are guessing games, however, poker relies more on the element of bluffing, because the level of entropy is much higher. Bridge gives you clues throughout the play and while not easier, it allows for more skill expression.

In poker, you have to express your skills to read the situation and fold or match bets depending on what you see in the room. 

In bridge, bluffing or rather, lying, is not an option. Doing things to mask your cards is considered unethical. The game is all about partnerships and disclosure. What one partnership does is available to another. Typically, bridge tournaments for money aren’t played that often, because people are tempted to cheat and bridge is a game of ethics first, and then everything else. 

While both games of guessing and entropy, bridge and poker have glaring differences. 

Modern card games are plentiful, and given our rich history with playing cards, we were able to develop some pretty outstanding games. Modern card games are nothing like the games of the past, except that they use some sort of playing cards. The design is different, the rules are often strange, but they are all beautiful in their own way.

Here are a couple of modern card games that you should definitely consider playing.

Jaipur

Jaipur is a very pretty game, with a design that you will not find elsewhere. It is a two player game, which is its only complication, as far as card games go. The object of the game is to get an invite to the maharaja’s court. You are a couple of traders in the Indian city of Jaipur. 

The easiest way to win? There is none. You have to let the game play out its own way and adapt on the fly. You can trade cheap goods or expensive ones and either is a possible way to glory.

The Resistance

Social deduction games are about as fun as they are dangerous, if you are in the company of people who tend to get angry quickly. The Resistance puts you in the shoes of a resistance, whose goal is to overthrow a corrupt government. To do so, the resistance must complete 3 out of 5 missions. But, not everything is cut and dry. There are traitors in the midst. 

The goal of the game is to root out the traitors for one side of the resistance and for the traitors, to sabotage the resistance without revealing who they are. You can see why this game might be bad for friendships.

Gloom

Gloom is a fun game. Your goal is to make a family as sad as possible, in order to make their deaths as miserable as possible. Your opponents will have to cheer the family up, to keep that from happening. The game takes a very light-hearted approach to making someone miserable, which is why the game is so fun. You’ll have a bunch of laughs when you play this, whose artwork should remind you of a famous director who cast Johnny Depp many times.

Marvel Champions

Superhero games are always interesting, but can be overly tacky if done improperly. Marvel Champions was made by the one and only Fantasy Flight, known for their deep and strategic games.This one is a deck builder, so it might take you a few turns to start appreciating the game. The goal is to stop a villain from making their plan come true. You have to upgrade your heroes and use their strengths to combat the no-gooder. 

With how many card games there are, traditional and modern, it is very hard to pick out a few that are great to play. These ones are the picks at the moment, but the list may and will change with time, given the sheer number of amazing card games.

Card games are plenty and we often know about some of them, like UNO, poker, blackjack, bridge and so on and so forth. However, since playing cards have been around for centuries, we have a lot of card games that we have probably never heard of. This is true for most things that were around for centuries and have evolved with the people.

Bizarre card games are plentiful so let us look at some of them that are relatively unknown but still fun and interesting to play.

Exploding Kittens

The name will horrify most animal lovers and rightfully so. The deck is colored red and the suggestions are obvious. The rules are relatively simple. You get a card that is a cat and also a bomb. You have to diffuse your card, or rather, cat-bomb, if you want to live. 

However, that is only one part of the game’s objective. The other part of the objective is for you to survive while all other players blow up. This is definitely a game for hardcore card players.

Grave Robbers From Outer Space

This is another interesting game that takes popular fiction from movies, and gives you a card game. The object of the game is to attack the other players’ characters if you have monster cards, and eventually kill off their characters to be the last person/monster standing. It is a fun game to play and there are many others from the series, all dealing with various topics from popular culture.

Goat Lords

Animal-themed card games seem to be more popular than other types of card games. Goat Lords is a great card game that you want to play with a couple of friends who are keen on strategy games. The rules are complicated, but in the end, you want to have the largest herd.

You can match goat cards to have a stronger herd and eventually, duel other people’s herds to win their goat cards. The game is fun and the cards look amazing.

Joking Hazard

Comic book geniuses Cyanide and Happiness have made their own card game, which is actually a comic book building game. Randomized and entertaining, the goal of the game is to build a comic from a couple of cards that you get. 

The game has many cards, actually 360 of them, so the odds that you can get either a good or bad comic are both in your favor. Either way, it is a fun game to play with friends. 

These are some of the weirdest card games that you can play. Try them and be prepared to find even weirder ones if you look hard enough.

Card games are interesting because there are so many of them. Card games can range from simple ones, which you play alone, to very complicated ones, which you would play with other people or against them, depending on how you look at it.

Blackjack is a game that you basically could play on your own, but is typically played with other people. The game itself is mostly a game of luck and chance, but if you know what you are doing, it can also be a somewhat skillful game, not including card counting, which is illegal in most parts of the world.

Blackjack is a great card game and here are some things that you should know about it.

Blackjack Typically Has the Same Rules, But

The other rules of the game don’t have to be the same. Most blackjack games play the same, striving to hit 21, to beat the house and the other players. However, there are secondary rules, regarding payouts, doubling of cards, surrendering and so on and so forth.

The problem with these secondary rules is that they favor the house or in most cases, the casino, or dealer. They will very rarely favor the player, so have that in mind if you want to play blackjack anywhere. Look up the basic rules if they are specified anywhere. If they are not, then you might want to consider playing elsewhere.

Strategies Change the Edge

Blackjack has a couple of ways to play the game, but overall strategies are not logically sound, unless a computer analyzes the game and gives you the best possible outcome, based on the odds and the current cards on the table. 

In online blackjack, that is definitely a possibility, but when playing in person, that is hardly doable. While there are many strategies, there is often only a single best hand that you can play, which would have the best possible outcome. If you don’t play this hand, you are giving the house their edge back.

Card Counting is Doable But Not Advisable

Math geniuses can count cards, but so can other people who are willing to learn the basics behind it. Card counting is illegal if you use anything to help you do it. Most casinos will throw any person who does any type of card counting, and you may even be blacklisted. 

However, card counting is a viable strategy that a person could do if they were well-practiced enough. Most casinos have sophisticated systems that can spot card counters if things go out of hand and a person starts winning more than usual.

Look Out for the Payouts

How much you get paid is determined by the payouts, which are typically 3 to 2 in most casinos. They can be lower, which is not something you should accept. Read the rules, ask around, and find a casino that pays 3 to 2. Some casinos pay 6 to 5, which is a lot less than 3 to 2. 

This basically means that you get 3 dollars for every 2 you bet. This also means that a 6 to 5 is worth a lot less. Always be informed about the payouts before you even consider waging your money against the house.

Blackjack is Better than Most Games

Blackjack is one of those games that have better odds than other card games. When you mostly play against the dealer, you should have better odds than in other games, such as poker, where there can be up to 10 players at a table.

Blackjack is a very interesting card game that can be easy or hard to play, depending on how familiar you are with the game.

We know how to play card games, or at least some of them. Not all card games are remotely similar, even though they might be using a similar deck. A 52 deck is a standard deck but it also doesn’t have to be. There are games that don’t use standard decks, but use their own special decks. 

There are a plethora of card games that play in their own way, never like we expect them to. Some of these card games are so complicated that they take a lot of time to even become familiar with the basics and only then do you realize how complicated they actually are. 

However, not all complicated games are popular.

In fact, most popular card games are relatively simple. Here is a list of the most popular card games.

UNO

UNO is at the top of the most popular card games that are played today. This is one of those games that uses its own special decks, with cards that are matched according to symbol or otherwise color. 

UNO is a great game to play at parties and is actually one of those games that created a living meme, namely the Reverse UNO trap card. UNO is very simple to play and will always be. 

Adapted variants of UNO using a standard 52 deck exist and have a different name in every country.

Poker

Poker will always be among the most popular card games. It is a game of skill, to a certain point, but also a game of psychology. Your expressions, real or fake, can tell stories of their own, should you master them. 

Poker is a great game to be played in the company of others, particularly if there is actual money involved. Poker has its own World Championships, not to mention local tournaments. Playing in high stakes poker matches is like playing at the Olympics, really difficult to win and against tough, seasoned opponents. 

Blackjack

Blackjack is among the simplest of all the card games. You get a number of cards and you say hit me, to see whether you have reached 21. If you have reached 21 and the house hasn’t, you won. Going over 21 immediately disqualifies the player. 

Blackjack can have huge payouts if you know what you’re doing. 

Bridge

Bridge is one of those games that falls under the category of skill, particularly if you count duplicate bridge. It is a great card game, often played by the elderly, mostly because matches last long. It is one of the only co-op card games.

These are the world’s most popular card games at the moment.

Playing cards are a large part of our history as a species. They are always there, everyone’s got a deck, often a standard one. What more do you need, except another deck if you’re playing with more than two people? 

Playing cards, like most things in history, had to begin somewhere. With how we tend to twist and turn things, it becomes harder to find the right information about almost anything, let alone something specific like playing cards.

Here is a brief overview of the history of playing cards, where they began and how they progressed.

14th Century Europe

Playing cards in Europe appeared around 1370, in either Italy or Spain. Like most things during that time, playing cards were toys of the rich. They were hand-painted and very expensive. 

Playing cards changed hands and during the 15th century, most of Europe’s upper class had playing cards in their possession, and used them as a pastime activity.

Cards Getting Cheaper

It didn’t take long after the invention or discovery of playing cards for them to get cheaper. The German printing techniques brought prices down, because hand-painting was no longer necessary.

In the late 15th century, around 1480, a French technique of stenciling made card making cheaper, but also managed to simplify the process enough, so that we ended up with the symbols we still use to this day, trefle, pique, carreau and coeur, which translates to clubs, spades, diamonds and hearts. 

Cards Getting More Popular

During the 16th and 17th century, cards were becoming a lot cheaper and were now accessible to the general public. Along with dice, cards were the favorite pastime in pubs and underground gambling dens, or simply gambling dens, because gambling wasn’t regulated at the time.

King Louis XIV used gambling as a way to fund the country, having a single casino which was controlled by the throne. Other countries at the time simply taxed card production. 

The Standard Deck

During the creation of the cards at the end of the 15th century, England imported the French design and we got the 52 standard deck, even though there are other decks. A deck of cards typically has numbers 1 to 10, with the first card also being called an Ace. The cards are colored red or black, with diamonds and hearts being red while spades and clubs black.

Aside from the numerical cards, there are also the royal cards, the jack (which was once a knave), the queen and the king. There are also the joker cards, which have variable value depending on the game.

This is a brief history of playing cards, from the day they were reportedly created to today, when we have all sorts of decks in all sorts of styles.

Card games have grown in popularity recently and even though we spend a lot of time using the internet, we still play card games. Some of these games are the ones you have heard of, such as blackjack and poker.

Today’s topic will be poker, a card game that can be learned in minutes, yet still be difficult enough to master and could take years before one is able to compete at a higher level. The game is also partly luck-based and falls under the category of gambling, but does have a high skill ceiling, as well.

Here is everything you should know about poker.

Poker is a Comparing Card Game

The more you learn, the more you are surprised. Poker is a card game, which is what most people are aware of. However, most people also don’t know that poker is a comparing card game. The object of the game is to have a better hand than the opposing players. The way you determine who has the better hand is by comparing cards in the end, after everyone has received their cards and decided whether they want to fold (stop playing for that round), or call (match) the bet. 

Comparing card games are aplenty, from blackjack to baccarat, to name a few of the ones that you will know off the top of your head.

Poker Has Many Variants

Unlike most games which are relatively fixed and bound in tradition, poker has tons of variants which revolve around the four main ones, straight, stud, draw and community. Texas Hold ‘em belongs to the community group of poker variations, and it is one of the most popular poker types.

Games are also considered to be poker variants if they follow the poker hand rankings, going from five of a kind if wildcards are used, then straight or rather, royal flush, down to the higher card. Given this rule, there are thousands of poker variants. Video poker, for example, is based on the draw poker family, and is more akin to a slot machine than actual poker.

Poker Has Tournaments

Poker has many tournaments. They range from local to international.

The problem with poker is that it has so many variants. Being so versatile, poker is hard to pin down and players would have to adapt and learn new variants if they would want to attend and compete in different poker tournaments. Some World Championships exist, however, neither of them is a single, most anticipated event, like the FIBA and FIFA World Cups are, for example. 

Poker Has Many Video Game Counterparts

Poker is available online, as a video game. Some poker variants can be played online, for free, without any financial stakes. There are also poker games which can be played for money, also available online. Some games can be played against computers, while others can be played against people, albeit still online. Online poker is considered to be harder than regular, because bluffing and other psychological aspects of the game are not available.

Poker is an interesting comparing card game that has been around for centuries. It is still played, online and in person, depending on what the player prefers. Poker has many variants and would take a while for a person to even track them all down, let alone learn their rules.

Most new users will not remember a Windows game from the early days called Solitaire. It is a simple game, a card game. But, most people will not know its history or where it came from. Older Microsoft Windows users will know about the solitaire game, especially when you finish the game and the cards start swirling around, only to be greeted by an error and a system freeze.

Anyway, here is everything that you should know about the card game solitaire, which is actually a different card game – as it is known under a different name.

Solitaire – It’s Actually Klondike

Solitaire games are any type of games that you can play on your own, specifically card games. So, any card game that can be played alone is a game of solitaire.

Klondike is a type of solitaire, also known as patience (which is its European term), a game that is well-known to most 90s Windows users, and above. 

During the 90s, Microsoft added Klondike under the name of Solitaire, as a free game with its operating system. Solitaire is still there, under a different name, the Microsoft Solitaire Collection, which has many card games that the user can play alone. 

The Rules of the Game

Solitaire or rather, Klondike, is a simple game where the goal is to match the cards in order, but the rules for stacking the cards are not as simple, cards can only be stacked from king to number one, while only using opposing colors, a black king and a red queen. But, when it comes to actually winning the game, the cards need to be stacked from ace up to the king, but all of the same suit. 

The game starts by having seven pillars of cards, left to right, growing larger, each having one card turned facing you. The first pillar has one card, while each pillar to the right has one more card, all of which but the first are turned back.

The remaining cards are in the deck and they can be dealt three at a time, with the rightmost card being the only viable one to play until removed. 

The game ends when the player stacks all the cards according to their suit or when the player cannot make any more legal moves.

Where to Play “Solitaire”?

If you look up solitaire on Google, you will find that it is playable right on the search engine page. The next result will take you to a solitaire-dedicated site, where you can play solitaire, or rather, klondike. 

A site called world of solitaire offers all types of solitaire games, from regular klondike to games such as spider solitaire, freecell, pyramid and even hearts. All of these games can be played online for free, on sites which are built using Javascript, most likely. Some sites have ads, but they are not intrusive and will not be in the playing field.

This is everything you should know about solitaire games, and the one that is included with Windows, klondike.