Cards Cards Cards
This is my first post at our card games blogs, so I thought to myself, what better title for an inaugural blog post than “Cards Cards Cards”. And that’s what the entire site is about–playing cards and card games. I’ve been playing cards all my life, and I’ve especially grown fond of both poker and of commercial card games that require a proprietary deck to play. Most of what you read me writing about here will be related to cards and card games.
The great thing about owning and operating a site about card games is that I’ll never run out of things to write about. The sheer number of games that are played with playing cards is astounding, but on top of that, each card game seems to have multiple variations and cultural difference depending on where the game is being played. Pagat does a really good job of relating information about card games played with traditional decks, so that’s why so much of the content on our site focuses on commercial and proprietary card games.
7 Interesting Facts about Cards and Card Games
- The deck of cards most English speaking readers will recognize is the Anglo-Saxon American deck of playing cards, but that’s only one traditional deck of playing cards. (The Anglo-Saxon American deck of playing cards is referred to throughout this site as “traditional cards”. This isn’t meant as a slight to other cultures, but I am writing from the perspective of my own culture. This deck of cards has four suits and thirteen ranks. The suits are hearts, diamonds, spades, and clubs, and the ranks are 2-10, plus the jack, queen, and king.) A German deck of cards has different suits: leaves, hearts, bells, and acorns. And Tarot cards are used for more than just fortune-telling; you can also play card games with them. Countless varieties of trading card games and proprietary deck games are also available.
- All decks of cards have a couple of things in common. Cards are always the same size and shape in a deck of cards. The cards always have two sides, a face and a back, and the backs are always identical to each other. (So you can’t determine what’s on the other side of the card by the back.) Card games are almost always games of incomplete information, so it’s important that the cards be kept secret during gameplay.
- Whether you deal clockwise or counter-clockwise depends on where you’re playing. It’s traditional here in the USA to deal clockwise, and that tradition holds true in North American, Australia, North and Western Europe, and in Russia. But in South and Eastern Europe, and in South America and Switzerland, cards are dealt counter clockwise.
- Card games don’t really have “official” rules. Some commercial card games have official rules, and when there’s organized play governed by some kind of organization, then yeah, there are official rules. But all card games began as someone’s set of house rules. Most card games we play today are an amalgamation of various house rule changes of other, older card games.
- There are lots of different ways to categorize card games. For example, one way of categorizing card games is by dividing them into traditional card games, proprietary deck card games, and trading or collectible card games. Another way to categorize card games is by the players’ goals–trick taking games, comparing games, accumulating games, and shedding games are all variations of card games that are determined by the players’ goals.
- It’s common in various works of fiction for fictional card games to be invented. These are common in science fiction, where people in the Star Wars universe play a game similar to blackjack called “Pazaak.” But even in contemporary literary fiction, you’ll find fictional card games. The characters in Anne Tyler’s The Accidental Tourist play a card game called “Inoculation”.
- Magic the Gathering is the first of a new type of card game that was introduced as recently as 1993, the collectible card game. People have been playing cards for thousands of years, so it’s interesting that new types of card games are still being invented.
I have lots of content planned for the site. One of my most recent additions to the site is this big list of card games I just finished. (It’s not really finished, but I’ve finished starting it, if that makes sense.) Soon every game on that list will link to a page with a review and the rules for how those card games are played. And soon I’m going to publish the largest card game glossary on the Internet too.
I welcome thoughtful and constructive comments on the site, so please leave a comment here or contact me with your feedback regarding the site.
This entry was posted on Monday, February 8th, 2010 at 4:21 pmand is filed under Cards. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.