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May 25, 2018 1:17 PM   Subscribe

Cardgames.io: your one-stop shop for rounds of cribbage, euchre, gin rummy, hearts, idiot, manni, classic rummy, spades, spit, switch, whist, and more. No bells, few whistles, mostly cards (plus backgammon, checkers, and Yahtzee).

(Fair warning when playing spades: Bill, your eternal partner, is an incorrigible overbidder.)
posted by Iridic (57 comments total) 76 users marked this as a favorite
 
how did I actually forget how to play Euchre?
posted by GuyZero at 1:37 PM on May 25, 2018 [3 favorites]


Goddammit, you sent me a Euchre link at work? On a Friday? Before a holiday? Goddammit.

And thank you.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 1:39 PM on May 25, 2018 [12 favorites]


What, no Faro?
posted by tobascodagama at 1:40 PM on May 25, 2018 [1 favorite]


Anyone up for 500?
posted by zamboni at 1:50 PM on May 25, 2018


Euchre is life.
But, only when you play “screw the dealer”
posted by Thorzdad at 1:57 PM on May 25, 2018 [4 favorites]


how did I actually forget how to play Euchre?

Same. Even though I'm pretty sure Euchre was a mandatory credit in the Ontario high school curriculum when I passed through.
posted by Capt. Renault at 2:02 PM on May 25, 2018 [8 favorites]


Wanna play 52 Pick-Up?
posted by chavenet at 2:16 PM on May 25, 2018 [2 favorites]


Welp, there goes my weekend.
posted by chaoticgood at 2:22 PM on May 25, 2018


Bridge seems like an odd omission. Too hard to program the other players?
posted by chortly at 2:24 PM on May 25, 2018


(Fair warning when playing spades: Bill, your eternal partner, is an incorrigible overbidder.)

Yeah, he just trumped my ace in euchre, too. Bad form, Bill, bad form.

Even though I'm pretty sure Euchre was a mandatory credit in the Ontario high school curriculum when I passed through.

I went to high school just south of the border, and we managed to grudgingly fit in a few academic periods between euchre games.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 2:38 PM on May 25, 2018 [5 favorites]


John and Lisa can go eat shit. They're using hand signals or something to keep beating me and poor Bill at Euchre.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 2:42 PM on May 25, 2018 [5 favorites]


Bill gets all the good cards in cribbage, too.
posted by briank at 2:59 PM on May 25, 2018 [2 favorites]


Cool! I’d never played Whist, but had heard of in a lot of Victorian writing. I just played my first ever Whist game and Bill and I won!

(It’s basically Spades, with a score threshold and variable trumps. So if you’ve ever played any of a hundred different trick-taking games, you’ve played Whist.)
posted by darkstar at 3:07 PM on May 25, 2018


Me and Bill are doing pretty good at spades! 3-0! Bill even had to cover my nil while setting them for us to have a chance in one of the games, and he did it! Go Bill! Then we bagged them out next hand, and eventually came away with the victory. 15 hands to win that one!

Though I'm having trouble getting Euchre to play. And the scoring on Whist and Spades is occasionally not working correctly--I had to hit "new game" to get it to play the next hand on the third game of spades, and when I win a hand in Whist it stops and doesn't move forward....Metafilter hug of death?
posted by GregorWill at 3:27 PM on May 25, 2018 [1 favorite]


Goddamnit Bill
Learn how to bid
posted by thelonius at 3:48 PM on May 25, 2018 [4 favorites]


Same. Even though I'm pretty sure Euchre was a mandatory credit in the Ontario high school curriculum when I passed through.

god yes.

This simulator would be even better if you just played one trick and then everyone threw their cards onto the table and shuffled for the next hand.
posted by GuyZero at 4:17 PM on May 25, 2018 [6 favorites]


They're using hand signals or something to keep beating me and poor Bill at Euchre.

I believe the canonical table talk is "bidding spades for my partner" and then when their eyes bug out you say "I meant hearts"
posted by GuyZero at 4:18 PM on May 25, 2018 [2 favorites]


OMG euchre. Who knew so many mefites were from the general michigan/sw ontario area? Wait, it's *that* extremely regional, right? Not much Euchre going on in Chicago or Cleveland, is there? What are the Euchre bounds? We need a Euchre distribution map.
posted by Stewriffic at 4:20 PM on May 25, 2018 [1 favorite]


What are the Euchre bounds? We need a Euchre distribution map.

Euchre skips right over Chicago, but heads down into central Illinois, and spreads east from there all the way through to western PA. I learned in Champaign, Illinois, but hadn't heard of it in Chicago.
posted by hydra77 at 4:24 PM on May 25, 2018 [2 favorites]


Why do I remember no trump being a valid euchre bid? It seems not to be in any online rule compilations.
posted by GuyZero at 4:31 PM on May 25, 2018 [1 favorite]


I learned euchre in suburban Chicago. I think the Euchre Belt follows the general contour of the Great Lakes, plus Iowa, eastern Missouri, and northern Kentucky.
posted by Iridic at 4:36 PM on May 25, 2018


OMG euchre. Who knew so many mefites were from the general michigan/sw ontario area

Northern Ontario is more of a cribbage region (not that I was any good). I was completely lost when it came to euchre when I came down South.

Sadly no Tarot.
posted by Ashwagandha at 5:24 PM on May 25, 2018


Wow thanks for this! I just wish Bill were a better partner...you'd think they'd program him not to trump his own partner!
posted by FireFountain at 5:42 PM on May 25, 2018 [1 favorite]


Euchre is definitely midwestern. Had a work offsite trip where me from Southern Illinois, two Michiganers and an Iowan taught everyone else from around the country how to play.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 5:49 PM on May 25, 2018


Also, I thought euchre’s origins were from germans fleeing the aristocratic Vons in the 1840s. The two jacks being “bauers” (farmer) beating the royalty???
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 5:51 PM on May 25, 2018 [3 favorites]


What are the Euchre bounds? We need a Euchre distribution map.

Niagara Falls, NY area, right on Lake Ontario.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 5:53 PM on May 25, 2018


My wife (a Detroit native) did teach me euchre at one point, but the main game her family played was definitely pinochle. Neither game seems to be catching on with our Kansas friends and neighbors.
posted by jsnlxndrlv at 5:58 PM on May 25, 2018


I had a friend named Ramblin’ Bill,
He used to rob, gamble, and steal.
Our last game of spades, it was an epic fail.
Well, I got news on Monday,
He got locked up on Sunday,
They got him in a two-bit, eight-bit jail.
He's in the jailhouse now,
He's in the jailhouse now,
Well, I told him to his face,
Stop biddin’ low, an’ don't trump my ace,
He's in the jailhouse now.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 7:06 PM on May 25, 2018 [5 favorites]


What are the Euchre bounds? We need a Euchre distribution map.
I learned growing up in Western Wisconsin. Now live in Louisville and there are a bunch of people here who play. No one plays cribbage though, a crying shame.
posted by chaoticgood at 7:27 PM on May 25, 2018


Back before the poker-on-TV craze, I knew someone who made a good living at Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun playing the low-limit tables. My brother and I could beat him on the regular, as my Brother was a pattern-matching prodigy, and I just loved reading books on poker, even more than playing the game.

So, Pro, Bro and I are in a famous resort in CT attend a poker tournament! $50 buy-in, only three buy-ins allowed. They only have one a year. Basically, high-stakes poker with funny money. Pro gets knocked out way early, blowing through his buy-ins early. Bro and I make it to the last two tables with only an extra buy-in each, and I run and gun when I should have rocked, I'm out. I could buy myself back in, but man, the level of talent at the tables here...

My brother wins the whole damn thing. A $5000 prize, I remember this little weird dude whipping off his sunglasses to stare my brother in the eye when I recognized his "I find you funny and inoffensive, but I dare not show it" expression. Little dude was done before he had begun.

My brother takes his jackpot to the actual low-limit tables annnnnnd...

It's gone. Poof. Pro sits in as Bro goes broke, and winds up with comp suites for all of us and a healthy profit for himself.

Ain't enough poker books in the world...

Why, Mr. Horblower, won't you join us as a fourth for whist?

Now I can be an impoverished sea-captain between wars in my browser! Ossum.
posted by Slap*Happy at 7:29 PM on May 25, 2018 [1 favorite]


When you win money, the idea is to leave the casino.....
posted by thelonius at 8:14 PM on May 25, 2018 [1 favorite]


I swear I played Gin Rummy at my after school program, but it seems to be a different game than what Bill plays.

The other game I played was Spit! But you can't simulate slapped fingers online.
posted by batter_my_heart at 11:44 PM on May 25, 2018


The biggest restaurant in the village where I grew up had weekly euchre tournaments during the slow season in winter. They'd close off the big dining room at 8:00 on Monday nights, and have any number of tables going in the first round.

I can't remember how much the entry fee was, but half went into the prize kitty and the other to the restaurant, to help defray the cost of room use, wings, and beer. Winners played winners until one team won the kitty. My Mom and her boyfriend won a few times.

Ed, who had a Dad joke for every occasion, would start every game with a loud, exaggerated, "Well, I was gonna go down to the clubhouse at the baseball diamond and dig with my spade, but Doc says it's bad for my heart!" Mom would always say, "I got a foot for a hand." But then they'd practically read each other's minds all night.

And as the night and the beer flowed on, every once in a while, from behind the sliding doors, you'd hear a chair scrape back and somebody holler, "RENEGER!!" or, "YOU TRUMPED MY ACE, YOU SHITHEAD!" and then peals of laughter.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 12:49 AM on May 26, 2018 [3 favorites]


I just discovered a great site for Euchre, https://www.trickstercards.com/.

It took a bit to understand all the variations, but it includes No Trump.
posted by SNACKeR at 5:15 AM on May 26, 2018 [5 favorites]


This simulator would be even better if you just played one trick and then everyone threw their cards onto the table and shuffled for the next hand.
And then having to explain to the one player who objects: "I'm two-suited and I've got a protected left."

The two jacks being “bauers” (farmer) beating the royalty
I did not know this. Thank you.

Central Indiana high school (Go Red Devils!). Lots of Euchre. The goal at our 30 minute lunch was to play at least 3 games. No trump is a perversion. My roommate and I went undefeated at our 14 day journalism camp at Indiana University.

Nobody plays in Georgia.
posted by donpardo at 5:34 AM on May 26, 2018 [3 favorites]


Stepmom grew up playing Euchre in Toledo, and when she married my Dad and moved to Georgia where we lived, she lamented that the game was, indeed, nowhere to be found.

I grew up playing Rook as the trick-taking game of choice (an artifact of the fundamentalist Bible Belt proscription against playing with a regular card deck.). A common expression in our family when playing any game, even when it wasn’t Rook, and things weren’t going your way, was to grumble half heartedly that “Somebody’s got Rook and all the 1s.”

It wasn’t until I grew up and left the state that I picked up the other variants (Hearts, Spades, Oh Shoot, etc.). I never learned Euchre, Pinochle or Bridge, though. I’m actually a little taken aback that Whist is so similar to what I’ve already played. From my readings, I’d fancifully imagined it a sort of obscure, rather genteel game played mainly by gentlemen’s clubbers in the mid-to-late 1800s, and not yer plain ol’ Spades precursor. I don’t know that I was expecting The Royal Game of Ur, or anything, but I thought it would be more...exotic.

On the other hand, it’s kind of cool having a connection to 19th Century gamers in this way. :)
posted by darkstar at 7:19 AM on May 26, 2018


What are the Euchre bounds? We need a Euchre distribution map.

Central Indiana old guy, here. Grew up watching my dad, grandfather, and uncles playing hours of Euchre every Sunday night. My wife and I play pretty regularly with some friends (transplanted from South Bend to Indy) and her brother and sister-in-law.

My family played a ton of cribbage. My wife and I used to play it a lot together, but have gotten very rusty at it. This should be a good way to pick it up, again.

Euchre sidenote...My mom, when she was growing up, would play 3-handed euchre. She was never really clear on the rules, but it sure sounded like a legit variation. If anyone has the sauce for 3-handed rules, I'd be much obliged.
posted by Thorzdad at 8:42 AM on May 26, 2018


I grew up playing Rook as the trick-taking game of choice (an artifact of the fundamentalist Bible Belt proscription against playing with a regular card deck.)

Yup. My wife and her friends (who grew up in this denomination) refer to Rook as "Church of God Poker."
posted by Thorzdad at 8:43 AM on May 26, 2018 [2 favorites]


Hey, if you play the checkers game, you get to play against Bill’s dad.

(Who, it turns out, is also not terribly skilled.)

Nevertheless, what their family lacks in skill, they make up in enthusiasm!
posted by darkstar at 9:18 AM on May 26, 2018


Euchre sidenote...My mom, when she was growing up, would play 3-handed euchre. She was never really clear on the rules, but it sure sounded like a legit variation. If anyone has the sauce for 3-handed rules, I'd be much obliged.

We called two- or three-handed euchre "cutthroat euchre," because you play just for yourself instead of a team. It's pretty much the same procedure as when you play a hand alone; you just play all the hands alone.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 9:25 AM on May 26, 2018


I take back what I said about Bill. He’s kicked my butt three games in a row in cribbage...
posted by darkstar at 9:42 AM on May 26, 2018


I've always lived in Vancouver BC and had never heard of euchre until my brother started dating his now-wife 18 years ago. She was part of what I called the Westward Migration (Ontario folks moving to BC). She, along with her brother and their friends who had also moved out here, taught us euchre and we were hooked. Many a night spent drinking and playing cards.

I've never met anyone who knows euchre who wasn't from or taught by someone from Ontario.
posted by twilightlost at 12:10 PM on May 26, 2018 [1 favorite]


Church of God Poker

I was at a chess tournament once, and a kid was asking the TD what his friend could tell his parents, who didn't want him to play since they thought it was not "Biblical".
posted by thelonius at 12:15 PM on May 26, 2018 [1 favorite]


Another boundary for Euchre. My Buffalo NY cousins were horrified i didn't know the game when we met up at Christmas in the 90's, but my syracuse ny high school posse played mostly Hearts.
posted by Tandem Affinity at 7:15 PM on May 26, 2018


who didn't want him to play since they thought it was not "Biblical".


Which, as a former Biblical scholar, has me scratching my head trying to think of any specific games that are canonically “Biblical”.

The closest I can recall are 1. casting lots (not done in a strictly gaming context, but to determine a candidate or recipient of an object of value), and 2. nonspecific references to athletes playing sports or children playing in the street.

In that sense, it doesn’t seem that there are any specific games that are strictly “Biblical”.


Well, maybe an argument could be made for War, Oh Hell, and Go Fish, but that’s...that’s just shoddy exegesis right there
posted by darkstar at 7:30 PM on May 26, 2018 [3 favorites]


As a former Baptist, I can assure you that shoddy exegesis is pretty much their whole deal.
posted by tobascodagama at 8:16 PM on May 26, 2018 [2 favorites]


I guess casting lots could be considered a game, but the Romans were the bad guys.

And there was no card-playing allowed at my Baptist primary school. Not to say that six-year-olds were trying to play euchre at lunch like we did at public high school, but it was one of those things they told us we and our families shouldn't be doing even outside of school.

The argument against "Old Maid" type decks was the same as the one against "heck" and "darn;" they're stand-ins for The Real Thing and come from the same place in your heart and mind.

It was just another one if those things we couldn't tell our classmates we did at home, like celebrating Halloween, putting up Christmas lights, or wearing trousers.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 8:53 PM on May 26, 2018 [3 favorites]


Which, if they were serious about prohibiting evil, satanic games, they would have instead forbidden Diplomacy, Monopoly, and 4th edition D&D.
posted by darkstar at 10:01 PM on May 26, 2018 [1 favorite]


Bridge seems like an odd omission. Too hard to program the other players?

Don't know if it's to hard to program, but I've never seen a Bridge program that was even remotely good.
posted by james33 at 5:45 AM on May 27, 2018


Euchre was a non-credit class at my Iowa college. In '99 several of us organized a trip to Florida for New Years, and we invited one guy along specifically because he was a good fourth euchre player. (also a good guy, we had fun). We played euchre up to the stroke of midnight, set down the cards and called a toast, and then at 12:01 we picked the cards back up and played out the rest of the night.

For some reason nobody in MN seems to play Euchre. I've played in a few cribbage leagues but its not quite the same.
posted by Elly Vortex at 9:14 AM on May 27, 2018 [3 favorites]


If there's one thing I learned from the all-nighters at the diner in my 20s (apart from nobody leaves until there's twenty percent on the table, cough up you slackers) it's that Hearts is the game you play when you want to lose friends. Even people who weren't normally competitive could and would turn nasty just because. We had to have a moratorium on Hearts at the diner along with Mao, which would start rowdy and end in chaos, and Bullshit, even if you promised the manager to call it "I Politely Disagree". Cribbage was great, though, especially if you drew the board on the back of a placemat and used salt & pepper and jelly cups for pegs. Can you really claim to have truly played Cribbage if you've never had to improvise a board? I ask you.
posted by Spatch at 1:30 AM on May 28, 2018 [1 favorite]


Just as well it's a public holiday here in the UK, because discovering that site has led me to waste most of the day playing computer solitaire - something I hadn't done for years. Turns out I still find it quite addictive.

Three things:

1) Does anyone know the extent to which the outcome of a game of solitaire is predetermined by the order of the pack when you start? Is there any element of skill involved and, if so, can we put a percentage figure on it?

2) Looking at the court cards in that site's solitaire deck, I noticed that the King and the Jack both look utterly miserable, but the Queen's quite happy. I feel sure something's been going on between the three of them, but I don't know what.

3) Mitchell & Webb's solitaire sketch.
posted by Paul Slade at 10:08 AM on May 28, 2018 [1 favorite]


I did not expect to learn that Metafilter loves Euchre. Yet I have, and I am losing all the time and help
posted by Slap*Happy at 6:48 PM on May 31, 2018


Bill! We need 21 points to win this game of Spades. No one can catch us. I have just bid 3. Why did you bid 6, even if you were real real sure you could make it?
posted by thelonius at 8:07 PM on May 31, 2018 [2 favorites]


I guess I'm like Bill. I was bidding last, we were winning 484 to 126, John bid 5, bill bid 2, Lisa bid one, and I still bid nil with four spades and a king. I want to run up the score! My average game score for the last eight games is 538 while theirs is 254.

This brings me back to the golden days of yahoo games, and the spades rooms there. Playing spades with people who are good, who know when to bid blind DN, who know how to bag out the opponent, it was exhilarating. I'm getting way too invested in my spades games here against computer opponents.

For those who say Hearts is a good way to end a friendship, my family plays an awesome variation that is expandable to however many players you have, though I've never played with more than twelve. Black Betty. You add a suit per additional player so everyone always has 13 cards. First add a second suit of spades, then hearts, then diamond, then clubs. Passes are declared by the dealer and can be as creative as anyone wants, though have to be stated before the dealer looks at his hand. Fishbowl pass, pass three to right and ten to the left, pass three to the person immediately younger than you, and when you want to be spiteful, anyone with a high spade pass them to Daniel! It never gets too personal because it's too insane, but I did watch a son once arrange for his father to get three black betties in one hand. It was a thing of beauty.
posted by GregorWill at 11:14 AM on June 1, 2018 [2 favorites]


I know that it's ten days after the last comment here, but I've been playing Euchre and I swear to GOD if Bill was a real person I would have dumped a beer over his head. What on earth does he think the standards are for calling a suit? Why is he trumping my ace? Why is he going alone when I have the Right Bower in my freaking hand?

Oh Bill. Arghhh!

I need some actual humans to play Euchre with. Thanks to this website I am now completely gaga over Euchre all over again, and right now the only one I have to play with is freaking BILL.
posted by Elly Vortex at 7:51 PM on June 10, 2018 [4 favorites]


Are there card games called Diamonds or Clubs? Maybe they existed, but were no fun.
posted by thelonius at 8:22 PM on June 10, 2018 [1 favorite]


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