Vanishing Card Games

Ever since leaving South America I haven't found a game of Truco anywhere....

That was a fun game, but I'm already forgetting how to play.

I remember playing crazy 8's, go fish and war(with 2 decks) all summer long at the community pool when I was a kid. Everything changed my senior year in HS when Hearts, then Spades turned into Bridge. I was hooked.

I play twice a week at a local club and every night on the internet, just about. But you're right Joe, social cards has pretty much vanished....maybe it's the intrusion of TV and DVDs

What's the gist of Truco?

I play cribbage with Mr B and pinochle whenever I get together with my siblings. At my old job we had a one hour lunch break. We played spades every day. M and I played cards when she was little - crazy 8s, fish, rummy, etc., but she's lost interest. While not a card game, I also like dominoes.

Whenever there are at least four people in my extended family together - we play spades. My mother, though she is losing concentration in other areas as she ages - reverts to being sharp as a tack when she plays cards- it's pretty amazing.
We also play hearts and pinochle- and that's everyone - even down to my youngest nephew who is seven can sit in and be a hand if we need him to.

In my nuclear family - my daughter and I love to play cards together. We play a game called 'kings in the corner' which is sort of a two handed solitaire and spit - which again is based on the same premise as solitaire but for two people and we love to play this game called 'golf' - so called because whoever gets the lowest score wins.
My son doesn't play - he's just like my brother who never played with us either - he doesn't have the patience to sit still long enough to play cards.

I don't play online - so I don't know if any of these card games are there or not - or how many people still play them - but they're still very much alive in my family. I carry a deck of cards in my bag- so I'll have them wherever I end up- I play gin with a friend of mine quite often when we go to the pub.
But it does seem like more people are not card players than are - for sure.

Wikipedia has a pretty good overview:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truco

we have a really cool, verra old pitch table in the bar, and 5 little old guys who play every thursday morning.

used to like cribbage in 'school stead of studying.

you manage a bar?
what's a pitch table?

ohhhhh --- I haven't played pitch in years. That was another family favorite.

Pitch, my favorite is call for your partner...

(no panz, not really, but kinda)

I am night chef, menu developer, and security as needed. also fix stuff when it breaks...

(I work at home during the days mostly)

not being nosy...just interested


guess they're the same thing

Wikipedia also explains many other "trick taking card games." The Chinese game "Bashi Fen" uses a standard poker deck and requires the use of the 2 jokers (the colored joker trumps the black & white joker). My wife taught me this game.

My father tried to teach me the German game "skat" which joefromchicago mentioned. A deck of "skat" cards are very different from poker cards. I found it easier to play the Chinese game than the German game.

We played war, go fish and rummy as children. As an adult, i've played what is referred to as "bid whiz" (an almost indistinguishable variant of whist), contract bridge, duplicate bridge, hearts, spades, gin rummy and euchre. Euchre was alive and well in Illinois as recently as the early 1980s. I've played in euchre tournaments (and won--i'm damned good). I think euchre was a regionally popular game, popular in Chicago and in Cleveland. In Ohio, i've played euchre as recently as the late 1990s, but it seemed to be popular principally among people from Cleveland and from Columbus.

Are any of the young'ns picking up social card games, or are they too busy playing anti-social video games?

My nine year old daughter plays "Bashi Fen". We restrict the amount of time she spends on video games.

German soldiers playing skat (c. 1914 by my estimate)

At school, we played Skat any Saturday and Sunday (for money, thus financing the drinks).

At university, we played regularly Doppelkopf, for money and for the drinks (when playing in a pub).

In nearby Paderborn, 66 ('sixty-six' is said to have been invented. (But that's not really the reason why I didn't/don't play it).


All these games are still played quite often. I still like to play, now and then.

I grew up on War, Crazy Eights, and especially Spit. I can attest that about 10-12 years ago high schoolers were into some of the "party games" like Kemps (though we knew it as "Kent"), Spoons, and Drug Dealer (somewhat similar in mechanics to Mafia or Werewolf... I found a link to the rules but the link explains it as a drinking game, which I've never done). Oh, and Big Two still seems to be pretty popular--technically a poker variant but it plays nothing like poker.

joe




what's your estimate on the time line for this game of skat