Plain Ol' Card Games

I'm curious to see what the consensus is here. What are people's favorite games played with a regular deck of cards?

My personal favorite is Euchre, which is played almost entirely in Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, and a little in Pennsylvania. I live in Kansas now, so no one ever wants to play it or even knows what it is. I need to get my fix when I visit family in Ohio and Michigan. When I do, we string together about 3 or 4 games.

How's 'bout you?

Depends what you mean by a regular deck of cards.

Nowadays the answer is "nothing". But in the past I've had a lot of fun with a number of different foreign card games taught to me by visiting students, such as ..

Swiss Jass:
www.pagat.com/jass/swjass.html

Scopa:
www.pagat.com/fishing/scopone.html

French Tarot:
www.pagat.com/tarot/frtarot.html

None of them use a standard deck, but the first two can be played with a standard deck provided you remove some cards. Tarot really needs a special deck - but it's worth it

To be clear, I'm referring to the normal deck usually seen here in the US, with hearts, clubs, diamonds, and spades.

To my great shame, I don't know the proper name for this deck.

I *love* Euchre.

Lotsof High School was taken up by playing Scum/asshole(sans drinking), ERS (aka slapjacks), Chairman Mao, or other made up games. One we made up in Bio class that was a lot like uno but with crazy rules, and punching. We named it Botchulism.

Oh, and then my friend introduced me to Cribbage and I was huge on that for a while.

Gin/Rummy is okay and I'll play with the wife.

Poker's great, though I dont play that often at all, but when I do it's gotta be for money - or else, what's the point?

Hearts got old pretty quick (I mean, it's on every PC), but Spades is still amazing.
Love those partner games.

Canasta kinda feels like Gin/Rummy to me, but maybe that's just me. Can take it or leave it.

Of course, 13 is the Mac Daddy of them all. It should only be spoken of in hushed, reverent tones.

Whew. So yeah - I loves me some card games!

EDIT: Golf! (thanks Joel) Taught that one at the beach last year. Good, simple game!

Euchre is the BOMB. The only other card games I seem to like are Golf (the in-laws like to play it) and contract bridge. Bridge is kind of a dying game because almost no one under the age of 50 knows how to play it. I've given up on ever teaching my wife how to play, because where are we going to find 2 others to play against?

I'm a die-hard Pinochle fan, but although it uses "normal" playing cards it is not a standard 52 deck. Euchre is good, as is Bridge if you have four equally matched players. Bridge is an excellent game to learn together with three other players.

Sag.

I minored in Euchre while I was going to college. It was a fun game and we used to play almost constantly (between studying obviously). It was fun watching opponents faces as they realize they are about get screwed because they didn't account for one of the bower's still being out and their partner doesn't have any trump. I don't know how many decks we had where the 2 through 8's were pristine and the rest of the cards saw heavy use.

when I started working professionally, we used to play hearts on the computer at lunch. Generally we were in the immediate vicinity so we could trash talk. It was funny to every so often hear, "God dammit Jeremy, you screwed me again" from the old welding engineer that worked for that company.

At our Boy Scout campouts, we would play poker (penny ante though) and then when I would come home from college, again we'd gather the gang and play poker. Generally 5 card draw.

Gin Rummy

Poker

Spades

Hearts

The standard 52-card deck is called either that or "the lower tarot" if you're some kind of snoot.

CRIBBAGE is awesome. I recommend that wholeheartedly. It plays unlike pretty much every other game. -You have to play by the rules-, the game was crafted to be fair as long as you play by the rules. All of them, Nobs, Heels, &c. You can pass on the Muggins.

I like CASINO too. MattDP, CASINO is a well-developed SCOPA (Skuba in Arabic) variant. has more action, uses a standard deck.

PITCH is dynamite--but only if playing the SETBACK version. The PITCH described on the BGG page is one I've never heard of--look for the variant in the discussions there.

jeb wrote:

I like CASINO too.

Ah yes! My wife's Uncle and cousin taught this to me and then schooled me in it. I'd love to play it some more...

Damn - dollar for dollar - it doesnt get better than a buck pack of cards!

I played tons of SKAT when I was young, it's still a great card game and a lot of people in Germany have a regular group of 4 playing it (always 3 players, 1 dealer). The bidding is somewhat complex, but once you've learned it it's really easy.

Doppelkopf is great as well, although I have just played a few games of it in my life.

I started playing Poker at Boy Scout Camp, when I was 12 years old. We played for candy. For the next two years, poker was my favorite game, until friends got me hooked on Dungeons & Dragons. We played for lunch money or allowance money, even played in school a few times until a teacher took my cards away and sent me to the vice-principal's office. (Principal in charge of vice?)

Euchre sucks, as near as I can tell. It was very popular while I was college at I.U., but only with drunk people at parties. So nobody ever coherently explained the rules of the game to me, and I was pretty disgusted with the frequency of situations where people would skip the last few plays because the outcome was already obvious. If it's fun, why not play those hands out? If it isn't fun, why not play something that is fun, like Twister?

Poker (in several forms)

Tonk (Southern Rummy variant)

Hearts

Spades


That's about it, really.

I LOVE pinochle. Hearts and cribbage are also up there for me. I'd really like to learn bridge sometime but I still haven't gotten around to it.

It is impressive how many great games you can get out of one or two packs of cards.

A pack of cards is what I recommend every time someon on BGG pipes up with one of those "I'm going mountaineering and was wondering which game to bring. It needs to be light, waterproof, and play 2 to 6." Everyone chimes in with shit like FARKEL and POCKET BOGGLE and stuff. Just take a goddamn deck of cards! Spend the $15 for a double set of KEM plastic cards and you're set for life.