The Penguin Book of Card Games: Everything You Need to Know to Play Over 250 Games Read Free Page A

advantageous, since you not
    only gain material but also have free choice of suit to lead next. If
    you lead a suit which nobody else can fol ow because they have
    none of it left, you wil win that trick no mat er how low a card
    you play.
    The trick-playing principle can be varied in several ways. The
    most significant is by the introduction of a so-cal ed trump or
    ‘triumph’ suit, superior in power to that of the other three, the non-
    trump or ‘plain’ suits. If, now, somebody leads a plain suit of which
    you have none, you can play a trump instead, and this wil beat the
    highest card of the suit led, no mat er how low your trump card is.
    Trick-games vary in many dif erent ways, and in this book are
    arranged as fol ows.
    Plain-trick games Trick-taking games in which the object is to
    win as many tricks as possible, or at least as many tricks as you bid,
    or (rarely) exactly the number of tricks you bid.
    1. Whist, Bridge, and related partnership games with al cards
    dealt out. Most are games of great skil .
    2. Solo Whist and other games resembling Whist-Bridge but
    played without fixed partnerships, so everyone finishes with a
    score of their own.
    3. Nap, Euchre and others in which not al cards are dealt out, so
    that only three or five tricks are played. Many of these are
    gambling games.
    4. Hearts, and relatives, in which the object is to avoid taking
    tricks – or, at least, to avoid taking tricks containing penalty
    cards.
    5. Piquet, and other classic games in which the aim is both to
    win tricks and to score for card-combinations.
    6. Pitch, Don, Al Fours, and other members of the ‘High-low-
    Jack-game’ family.
    7. A miscel any of point-trick games including Manil e, Tresset e
    and Trappola.
    8. Skat, Schafkopf and other central European games of the ‘Ace
    8. Skat, Schafkopf and other central European games of the ‘Ace
    11, Ten 10’ family.
    9. Marriage games. These are ‘Ace 11’ games that give an extra
    score for matching the King and Queen of the same suit, the
    best-known being Sixty-Six.
    10. Bezique, Pinochle, and other ‘Ace 11’ games in which scores
    are made not only for marriages but also for the out-of-
    wedlock combination of a Queen and Jack of dif erent suits.
    11. Belote, Jass and other marriage games in which the highest
    trumps are the Jack and the Nine.
    12. An eccentric family of northern European games derived from
    a medieval monstrosity cal ed Karnof el.
    13. Tarot games, in which trumps are represented by a fifth suit
    of 21 pictorial cards. Tarots were original y invented as
    gaming materials, not fortune-tel ing equipment, and
    hundreds of games are stil played with them in France,
    Germany, Italy, Austria and other European states.
    There is room here only for a smal but representative selection.
    Non-trick games
    Games based on principles other than taking tricks are arranged as
    fol ows.
    Card-taking games Games in which the aim is to col ect or
    capture cards by methods other than trick-taking.
    14. Cassino, Scopa and other so-cal ed Fishing games, inwhich
    cards lying face up on the table are captured by matching them
    with cards played from the hand.
    15. A variety of relatively simple capturing games such as Gops,
    Snap, and Beggar-my-Neighbour, of which some (but by no means
    al ) are usual y regarded as children’s games.
    Adding-up games
    16. Games in which a running total is kept of the face-values of
    cards played to the table, and the aim is to make or avoid making
    cards played to the table, and the aim is to make or avoid making
    certain totals. The most sophisticated example, Cribbage, also
    includes card-combinations.
    Shedding games These are games in which the object is to get rid
    of al your cards as soon as possible.
    17. Newmarket, Crazy Eights and others, in which the aim is to
    be the first to shed al your cards.
    18. Durak, Rol ing Stone and others, in which it is to avoid being
    the last player left with cards in hand.
    Col ecting games