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:
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.