Card games with a standard 52 card deck

3-13 is about the easiest (while still fun!) card game you can play!
http://www.pagat.com/rummy/3-13.html

My dad would play what he called “Zein Check” with his sister and parents all the time as a kid/young adult in the '50s, and he taught it to me. No one else I’ve ever met knows what I’m talking about when I mention it.

A little Googling reveals it’s really Zion Check. The Wikipedia article on it is fairly accurate in describing its rules:

Unlike the article, I always played where players were dealt 10 cards in each hand. Players could buy cards that others discarded in order to meet the card requirements of later hands. The dealer of each hand also flipped over the top card creating the discard pile, so there was no “going twice” that the article describes.

Edited P.S.: This is a 2-deck game. It can be played with Jokers. I would always just call something wild in Jokers’ place.

Euchre is fine, but if you’re used to playing sheepshead, it’s just a thin game. Sheepshead is a trick-taking game with trump, like euchre, but it adds some interesting elements:

  1. After the deal, cards are left in the blind, and you can choose to take the blind or not. Taking the blind generally makes it harder to win (but gives bigger rewards if you do win, if you’re playing for money), so there’s a calculation about whether your hand is good enough to pick up the blind with.

  2. Whoever picks up the blind is partnered with whoever has the jack of diamonds. So there’s this interesting co-op traitor element, where the picker knows that someone is their ally, but doesn’t know who, and all the other players know that one of them is secretly working with the picker, but aren’t sure who it is; only one person in the game (the partner) knows who everyone is.

  3. Cards have point values. So a lot of times there are tricks that you can easily take, but you have to decide if it’s worth it. You need 60 points to win the game, so if there’s an 8 point trick on the table, is it worth using the highest card to take it, or should you hold out for something better?

It all adds a lot to the game, to the point where sheepshead has the complexity of a Eurogame with the wide accessibility of a straight card deck.

2 Player pitch is best played against someone you truly loathe. I agree that 4 player pitch is the best way to play it, though 4 player cutthroat is interesting sometimes too.

I’m more of a dice man, really. Cards are more working tools for magic, although do I enjoy a good game of cheat of an evening.

Ah yes, Tichu is another favorite. We played it at lunch daily for about a year and it never got stale. The official Tichu deck is more attractive, but with four other cards, as mentioned, you can play it with a standard deck more cheaply. It is a partnership game, like bridge, but with elements of pseudo-solo play as well as communication with partners via cards played. Fantastic game.

I play Cribbage just about every Monday night with some buds.

Great game for just BSing and drinking beer. The pegboard is a great crutch for drunk/stoned players.

Mark me down as a Tichu fan as well. I’m not as into it as some people in my group, but it is pretty much our go-to game when we’ve got four people and are just looking for something to wind up the night.

I grew up playing this, and while it maybe more of a children’s game than an adult game, if you are new to it, it should provide some amusement.

I play Wizard, Hearts and Rook most Friday nights.

Wizard requires a special deck as it has 8 additional cards. Rook can be played with a normal deck and 1 joker for the rook (playing with 13 size suits instead of 14). Hearts is always played with normal cards.

All are best with 4 players.

With two or three, I prefer Cribbage and Gin Rummy.

For four players, I like Whist-types games, mostly Spades and Hearts. I’m not a big fan of Bridge, but that’s probably because I don’t have a regular Bridge partner.

I don’t care for reflex-based card games, since they tend to mangle cards (and fingers).

  • Alan

Spit’s a great game to play with someone you fancy, though, you’re bound to end up holding hands!

Well, since the thread is up and I had never read it, let me recommend a Spanish game that I consider the best traditional card game ever designed:

Mus

It’s very similar to poker (bluffing based card-combination bets) but with a few differences that make it way more interesting. The most important of these is that it carries all the excitement and tension of poker, but without the need for money to be bet. The length and rhythm of the game creates the sort of emotional engagement money brings into poker.

Caveats: You can only play 4 players. No more, no less. And you play in pairs, 2 vs 2. Also, while the rules themselves are easy enough, the proper flow of the game is not that easy to learn unless you have somebody to teach you personally. Also, it uses a Spanish deck (no 8, 9 or 10, and no joker). Oh, and games are long (part of the dynamic that generates emotional engagement). A full thing can go for 3 hours easily, although shorter combinations are possible.

If anybody has three willing card playing mates and wants to try something different I suggest you guys give this a go.

Good memories.

My dad was a big Cribbage player and I have lots of memories of games similar to what @triggercut has described. Good times. Makes me wish we would have played more now.

We played lots of different games growing up and I remember Canasta being one of my mom’s favorites.

My grandpa was incredible at Gin Rummy. He used to win $100s a week playing after work down at the Elk’s Club, heh. I think his memory helped him a lot, which also helped him win money in Vegas when you could still play 1 handed Blackjack (can you still do that?).

“high five” Yeah, well 48 cards from two decks. Always loved Pinochle, but hard to find people to play. Makes me realize how cool my family was in that we used to play games like this all the time while I was younger.

Not sure if it was already mentioned under a different name, but my favourite two player card game other than Cribbage is Speed. That said, use either a deck you don’t care about damaging or something robust like Kem cards.

My favorite card game is Skat. It is only for 3 players and uses 32 cards of a standard deck. It has a definite learning curve and we learnt it in steps. Here is the Wiki page

Have you played Go Johnny Go, Go, Go, Go? It’s like a cross between Hoover and Eight Men Down.

It’s very simple:

  • Jacks are worth ten, kings are worth three. Apart from one-eyed jacks, which are wild cards.
  • Round one you get a hand of nine, round two a hand of seven.
  • Now, two’s a wild card. Apart from diamonds, which retain their face value. Except the king of diamonds, obviously.
  • Play in sequence unless you can match a pair or play a card in ascending or descending order. And that’s a Go, Johnny, Go, Go, Go, Go.
  • The winner is the man with the most tricks after fifteen hands.

Avid Spades player here. It’s considered a ‘black’ game, for whatever reason, and considering I learned if from the black dudes in my barracks in the military, fair enough. Whatever, I love it. I go on occasional online Spades binges, and even had a regular partner for quite awhile and rose pretty high in the rankings on MSN.

Eleventy points to you.

Pitch was the first card game I learned to play. There are many variations of it and all of them are played with a standard 52 card deck. Rummy was next, followed by Solitaire. Lots of Solitaire after I obtained a book entitled 150 Ways to Play Solitaire. An aunt taught me to play Canasta (edit: which is played with two 52 card decks). I learned to play Hearts and Bridge shortly after I entered college. Cribbage came a little later.

I still play “old Sol” once in a while but it’s been years since I’ve played any of the other card games I mentioned.