World of Card Games

Hi all - there's a possibility of a brief outage overnight tonight (Wednesday Dec 24, between 1 AM and 6 AM CDT). This is due to a network issue mentioned in my previous blog post. My hosting service tells me the site will probably experience a brief outage for about 1 minute, but it could be up to 15 minutes. Ugh. My apologies, but there's nothing I can do!

Last night, from about 1:15 AM CST to about 6:10 AM CST, there were sporadic network outages at World of Card Games. My apologies! This was beyond my control - my hosting service had network issues due to a software problem. They seem like a good, reliable service, and they're working on fixing the issue. I don't expect any more problems at this point.

Some of you will be interested to know that Karen Garner has published not just one, but two, books! Who's Karen Garner, you ask? Well, you may already have played a few games with Karen at World of Card Games, where her handle is "AG Butterfly." I've played many games with her, myself. She is friendly, chatty, and kind-hearted.

In a happy coincidence, she met her publisher while playing cards at World of Card Games! That publisher is Joe Perrone, Jr, of Escarpment Press. He plays at World of Card Games under the handle "catsklgd1." His business is tailored towards authors who want to self-publish, and he provides everything from the cover design to print and e-book formatting, and help with advertising campaigns.

Are you curious yet? Follow these links to Karen's two books:

They are currently available in paperback, and will soon become available for the Kindle and Nook. Congrats, Karen! I wish you much success!

Edit Dec 17 2014 - here are the links to the Kindle versions:

The server is now up and humming again at World of Card Games! Sorry for the interruption in service.

A new feature has been added to the Spades game. If a player leaves the game, the remaining (human) players are given the opportunity to fold their hand and re-deal. All current tricks taken and bids made are wiped away - the hand is effectively a do-over.

To make this happen, all players must agree to re-deal by clicking the "redeal" message box, which appears in the upper left corner. Redeals are allowed a maximum of 5 times per game.

redeal link in upper left corner

This is a new, experimental feature. As always, feedback is welcome. In particular, if you notice any problems, please let me know.

[Edit: as of December 27, 2015, you are given 30 seconds to vote for a redeal.]

World of Card Games will be down for about 4 hours starting Saturday, December 13, from 9:45 PM CST until Sunday, December 14, 2 AM CST. Here's a link to the time window in worldtimebuddy: scheduled downtime.

The outage is due to my server being moved, so it's not something that I have any control over. If the site is up any earlier than planned, or if there is any delay, I'll post a note here.

Recently, a player at the site (you know who you are!) suggested that I add World of Card Games to the Chrome Web Store.

So here it is - World of Card Games at Chrome Web Store!

This won't matter to most people, who come to the site by typing the site name into their browser address bar. However, it will be handy for those who use Chrome's app launcher - you can just click on an icon and go directly to the site. It saves a little time.
If you like this widget, please give it a good review in the web store :) Remember, this widget is only available for Google Chrome. But anyone can play at the site - most browsers will handle the games without problems. Things do work best on Google Chrome, though.

If you experience any trouble with the widget, please let me know! I've tested and it works fine for me.

The server was out for about 5 minutes this morning, so that some bug fixes could be applied. Sorry for the disruption in games!

I've attempted a fix for the blank screen bug. I was not able to reproduce it reliably, but I could find one case where it rarely happened, and I've fixed that. Please let me know if you see it again!

I've also received reports that the table listings are sometimes incorrect - empty, when they should not be. This appears to have been caused by the "blank screen bug" as well, so it should be corrected now. (Keep in mind that an empty table listing can sometimes occur - it just indicates that there are no tables with seats open at the moment.)

There are a couple of other bug fixes that you can read about in the changelog at the site (under "about" > "show change history").

I'll take this opportunity to let everyone know that there will be a longer outage on December 13, from about 10 pm - 2 am. The company that hosts my server is moving the server to a new data center. Sorry but there's not much I can do about this! I'll post another blog the day beforehand to remind you.

This morning, a player reported to me that they had tried to get to the site for about 1.5 hours, and were repeatedly met with a blank screen that looked like this:

blank page?

Is anyone else experiencing this? Please let me know. You can email me or post in the comments to this blog. I'm trying to get a feel for how frequently it happens.

[Edit: This bug should be fixed as of Dec 5, 2014. Please write me or post a comment if you see it again!]

The server was down for a brief time this morning to apply some bug fixes. I apologize for the disruption in your games!

Here's the summary of changes:

On occasion, the "Knock" button did not show up in Gin Rummy, when it should have. This is now fixed.

In Twenty-Nine, the "Accept" button became disabled when a new player entered the table. This is also fixed.

Some players have pointed out that the bots will waste a high trump card when defending a nil bid. They tended to use their high cards to trump, rather than bleed out trump cards. This is now fixed. Thanks to those who pointed this out, and helped to improve the bots!

Finally, your chat bubble has been shifted to the side a little further, so it will not obscure your cards anymore.

[tl;dr: so far as I can tell, cards are dealt perfectly randomly at World of Card Games. If you think that the deck is stacked, it's probably an odd run of bad (or good) luck that you're seeing.]

Sometimes, players will tell me that they think the deck has not been properly shuffled. They've had an unusual run of bad luck. Perhaps in Euchre, they haven't seen a bower in their last 5 hands, and it looks suspicious. In Gin Rummy, their opponent was dealt a Gin hand immediately. Or in Spades, they've been dealt a hand with no trump cards too many times to be believable.

At World of Card Games, the cards are dealt randomly, and I see no way that the deck could be stacked. Here's how the deal of cards works in every game on the site:

1. Every time that cards are dealt, an entirely new, ordered deck of cards is created by the system. It's as if I took a fresh pack of cards out of a sealed deck; the old deck is not re-used.
2. Then, these cards are "shuffled" using a random number generator.

That's it! It's very simple. You may see odd results, just like you might see a long run of "heads" in a repeated coin toss. But it's just random.

For those who are curious, just what is the probability of getting a trump-less hand in Spades? Here's an explanation:

A hand in Spades consists of 13 cards from a deck of 52. The number of combinations of such cards is 52! / (13! * (52 - 13)! ). According to Google's calculator, that is 635,013,559,600 (over 635 billion). That number includes all trump-less hands, and all hands with trumps as well.

To be clear, this does not count combinations in which the cards are merely reordered. For example, this count includes an entire hand filled with Spades, but only one such hand - the order of cards in the hand does not matter. For those who are hoping, this means the chance of ever getting a hand completely filled with Spades is 1 in 635 billion. "Not very likely" would be an overstatement.

all spades - dream on!

Okay, so how many of these hands are there that exclude trumps (Spades)? That is computed by taking all combinations of cards from a trump-less deck. A trump-less deck contains 39 cards (52 cards minus 13 Spades suit cards). Applying the formula for combinations again, we get 39! / (13! * (39-13)!). Google's calculator says this is 8,122,425,444 - about 8 billion different combinations of non-Spades cards.

So, there are about 8 billion trump-less hands in all 635 billion possible hands of Spades. The probability of getting a trump-less hand is the ratio of trump-less hands to all hands, which is about 1.28%. Not very likely, but it happens.

To test all this out, I ran a million simulations of Spades cards being dealt exactly as they are done at World of Card Games (using the same computer code). Here are the results:

• There were 4,000,000 hands dealt in total
• There were a total of 51368 trump-less hands, which is, indeed, 1.28% of 4 million [100 * (51368 / 4000000) = 1.28%]
• The count of trump-less cards for the first player was 12772, second player was 12790, third player was 12996, and fourth player was 12810.

In case you are wondering about that last bit, a certain amount of variation is expected between the different players. Notice the third player was getting slightly more of the trump-less hands in the above experiment. When I ran the experiment again, it was the second player who got most trump-less hands (12945). A little bit of variation is expected because of the random nature of the events.

Sometimes, you're in the middle of a card game with friends, and you need a break. You want to refill your drink, let in the cat, baste the turkey, etc. If you were all sitting around a table at home, you could do this. However, it hasn't been possible at World of Card Games... until now.

A "Pause" button was added, for private tables only, with this morning's update. Please chat amongst yourselves if you want to pause the game, to let people know your plan. You must recruit a majority of players for the pause to take effect. For example, if there are 4 (human) players at the table, at least 2 must hit the Pause button. If there are 2 players, then 1 player hitting the pause button is sufficient. When everyone is ready to continue, hit the "Continue" button.

Here's a screenshot of the new buttons, in the upper left corner:


I hope that using this new feature is relatively intuitive. If anyone has trouble with it, please write me with details. I may make changes to this in the future; it's experimental.

By the way, I did not add this to public tables, since I thought that most players, who are not really chummy with each other, would not take kindly to pausing a game.

There are some other, more minor changes.

I have increased the timeouts in 29 (Twenty-Nine) from 15 to 20 seconds for playing a card. It doesn't seem like much, but I hope it makes a difference. Timeouts at private tables are now 40 30 seconds, for all games. [Edit: 30 second timeout at private tables was applied Nov 19 2014 due to feedback.]

I've also deployed a few bug fixes. The site has had a problem with tables freezing in Hearts. I discovered a major bug that could cause that to happen, and it has been fixed. A big thank you goes out to the person who reported this to me most recently!

I've fixed a bug in Gin Rummy that allowed you to knock when you shouldn't be able to do so - another big thank you goes to the player who reported this (including a screenshot)!

Finally, I've added a small improvement to the Euchre bot strategy. This was suggested by a player who noticed that they could use a little fine-tuning. I'm no expert, but I think the bots are getting pretty difficult to beat in Euchre. This is largely thanks to a couple of very helpful Euchre players who have been great about giving me tips. Thanks to you both!

As always, let me know if you see any problems at the site. I'm constantly working to improve it.

This morning, the server was updated with a couple of new features.

Hopefully everyone knows about the "dislike player" icon that can help you avoid players you don't like... (if you don't, go take a look at the blog post which describes it). Now, you have a way to keep track of players that you like as well! There's a yellow star next to each player:

like this player

Click the yellow star to "like" the player. This adds them to your "liked player list." You can edit this list by clicking on your player name at the upper right, and scrolling down to the "Manage Likes" section.

Another new feature is the table listings area. Use the "list of tables" link at the lower left corner to open a panel that displays card games with available seats:

table listings

Notice the emphasis on "available" - only tables where you are allowed and that have open seats are shown. For example, if you are not a registered user, and there's a table that allows "Registered Users Only" with openings, it will not be displayed in the list. Full tables with games in progress are not shown either.

The list displays registered users with a green "R" while Guests are indicated by the letter "G" and robots are a pink "B". A yellow star (★) indicates a player that you have liked. Empty seats are indicated with an open square (☐). Relevant information is displayed about the table as well.

You may click on an empty seat, indicated by an open square, to take that seat. Be aware that if the seat is taken before the panel updates, you won't be able to take that seat! So grab it quick if you are interested.

The server was out briefly for an update this morning. Sorry for the interruption in games!

The update included a couple of changes. There was a bug in Gin Rummy which caused bots to time out, occasionally. Thanks to everyone who reported this! I found a problem which caused that, and fixed it. Please let me know if you see any other problems.

The drag-and-drop functionality in Gin Rummy has also been altered slightly, so you can now see the card that you've picked up to sort. I hope this makes sorting a little easier. Also, sorting now works on tablets - at least on the devices that I have available for testing. Let me know if this does not work for you.

Finally, the Hearts robots have been tuned up a bit, so they will no longer be so cooperative towards someone attempting to shoot.

Gin Rummy - click to play!

 Gin Rummy is now available at World of Card Games! This is a 2-player game that tests your pattern-matching abilities and your memory. The rules are described at the Pagat website.


As usual, there's a tutorial to get you started (click on the "Tutorial" button to the lower right of the Gin Rummy panel on the main page). And you can play with robots if you want to get comfortable before playing with real live humans.

One thing that will help when playing is the ability to sort your cards via "drag-and-drop" functionality.

Give it a try and let me know what you think! Please let me know if you notice any bugs.

[Edit: I just noticed a bug near the end of the Tutorial - a warning message shows up which says "You are not currently playing a game!". I'll fix this eventually, but in the meantime, you can continue the tutorial just by clicking the "x" in the upper right corner of the message - Sep 28 '14 12 PM EDT]

World of Card Games will be down for scheduled maintenance for a short time on September 28 (Sunday), at 2 AM EDT http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?iso=20140928T02&p1=179
 
Sorry for the inconvenience! As usual, a message will be posted on the site in advance, to give everyone some warning. The outage should only last about 10-20 minutes.

The site was down for almost 24 hours today. I apologize to everyone for the long disruption! It's back up now, and I'm investigating what went wrong.

dealer cannot discard the up-card

In Euchre, after the cards are dealt, a card is placed face-up in the middle of the table. Each player in turn gets a chance to "order up" this card, making its suit the trump suit. If it is ordered up, the dealer must take the card, and then discard a card.

At World of Card Games, the dealer is not allowed to discard the ordered up card.

A player at the site recently pointed out to me a scenario in which it would be useful to be able to discard the up-card, even though it's a trump card:

Let’s say I dealt and turned up the 9 of Clubs.  You order it up.  I’m holding Ace King of Hearts and Diamonds and the Ace of Spades.  You will most likely lead the Jack of Clubs so I would like to bury the 9 and save the hand I’m dealt.

I did a little searching, and I found a post in a Yahoo Group which describes a similar scenario. I will reproduce it here for posterity:

I caused a little disagreement while playing in a game of Euchre in a Internet League I play in the other day. I was dealer, holding the Right, Left, Ace, Queen, and 10 of Hearts dealt me, with the 9 of Hearts as the upcard. The three other players passed, where upon I picked the 9 of Hearts up, but then discarded it, keeping the five highter trump cards I was originally dealt. Making a sweep with the five trump cards I held, one of the opponents asked at the end of the hand, "Say, where is the 9 of Hearts you picked up?", to wit I stated that I had discarded it, which brought a chorus of protests form both opposing players, stating that I could not discard the upcard that I had picked up! I have been playing Euchre for 40 years, have seen this done several times over the years, and noone had ever said anything to the contrary about the dealer not being able to discard the upcard if it is order up into their hand, or the dealer pickes it up themselves. I have checked several books on Euchre and searched the Internet sites I know of, but have found nothing said about this situation in any rules anywhere so far. So what is the rule on this - can or cannot the Dealer discard the upcard if it is order up in their hand, or they pick it up themselves, making the upcard suit the trump suit?

(Note that in the above scenario, the problem could have been avoided if the dealer had discarded the 10 of Hearts, which was effectively equivalent to the 9 of Hearts.)

I looked around to see if I could find any definitive rule on this.

The rules at Pagat do not specify that the up card may not be discarded.

The Hoyle site seems to indicate that you should not discard the up card, but maybe I'm reading it too strictly - "As soon as a player accepts the turned-up card as trumps, the dealer discards a card. The discard is placed cross- wise under the undealt cards. The turned-up card belongs to the dealer in place of the discard."

Natty Bumppo's page very clearly states that there's nothing wrong with discarding the up card.

Based on my little bit of research, I'm inclined to think I should change the rule at World of Card Games so that the up card is allowed to be discarded. Please let me know in the comments how you feel about this.

Tom Servo says "want to play a game of Spades?"

In June, I took a stab at improving the robot strategy in the game of Spades.

I've taken more time to revamp the Spades bots, and those changes were deployed this morning. Both bidding, and choosing a card to play, have been substantially reworked. The bots are still far from perfect - there are some subtleties in Spades that I haven't handled, but I will eventually get to them. For now, I think that their new behavior makes them better players in general, and better partners, too.

If anyone notices specific bad habits that linger on, I'd like to hear about it. Feel free to write me at marya@worldofcardgames.com or just post the issue in the comments section.

I've created a Facebook page for World of Card Games. Not really sure how useful it will be... but here it is!
https://www.facebook.com/WorldOfCardGames

For those who are into Twitter, I've also got an account there - https://twitter.com/WorldOfCardGamz

I recently got an email from a player who thinks it would be better if the "stats" area in World of Card Games did not show your Win Ratio. Their idea is that people are too concerned about their win/loss ratio, and this motivates them to quit games when they are losing. They thought that without this ratio being displayed, people would be less likely to quit.

What do you think? Should I get rid of the Win Ratio under the stats area?

It surprises me, but I've had only a few complaints about the bot strategy in Spades. I rarely play with bots, so their problems haven't bugged me too much, and I haven't been highly motivated to fix them. However, when I do play, I've noticed one pretty obvious and irritating behavior: they tend to waste Kings. They'll play the King of clubs, for example, before the Ace of clubs has been played. This is a good way to lose the trick! With today's deploy, this bug is fixed.

In addition, someone mentioned to me that the bots sometimes bid nil when they are holding 5 spades! You will find various sites that recommend you not bid nil with 4 or more spades in your hand (e.g. sky_rockets1's page or the Rules of Spades site). This problem has been fixed as well.

I am far from finished with the bots. More improvements will be coming, when I have the time for it.

let's hope he's smiling because he got the bid right!

A couple of players pointed out to me that there was a bug in the game Twenty-Nine: after the first hand of cards was finished, bids no longer showed up in each player's nameplate. This made it harder to choose a suit because people weren't sure who had bid what... especially if they came into a game in progress.

This is now fixed. I've also added a little bit of information about the previous bid history. If a player has made at least two bids, their previous bid will show in parentheses. See the screenshot below:

twenty-nine: the previous bid shows in parentheses

In this scenario, you are Guest #89. You previously bid 15, and most recently bid 18. Guest #77 previously bid 16 but their current bid is 19. The dealer has only bid once; their initial bid was 17. HAL 9000 has passed twice in a row.

I hope this change helps to make the game more fun! Please let me know if you spot any more problems.

Last night, I attended another live, in-person card game session. We started out to play Spades. It turned out that my partner was new to the game, so it was decided to play a few rounds open-handed, so we could explain the rules and a bit of strategy. This turned out to be an interesting exercise.

Spades game, first hand, East leads. I'm playing the King and the Ace is still out there.

The initial hand is shown in the photo above. The dealer is North. I am South, and I bid 2. I did this despite the fact that I had a fairly strong set of spades. My thought process went like this in developing my bid:

• I have a lot of clubs, almost 50% of the clubs at the table. I can't count on the King of clubs winning a trick; it will very likely be trumped. So I won't include that in my bid.
• My diamond and hearts cards are useless.
• I may not be able to create a void very early in the game. I felt uncomfortable assuming that my one of my high spades would not be trumped by the Ace at some point.
• My best bet seemed to be aiming low, and dumping a couple high cards where possible. I figured that with a bid of 2, I might wind up with one bag if I took tricks with all of my spades cards. I thought that I'd pretty easily be able to dump the King of clubs.

Notice the total of all bids is 9! That leaves 4 bags on the table. After all bids were made, I was sure I'd make my bid, and definitely did not want to take a trick with the King of clubs.

The game started with East playing the 4 of clubs. With this play, it seemed unlikely to me that East was holding the Ace of clubs. I figured the Ace must be held by West or by my partner, North.

Whoever had the Ace was probably counting on using it to take a trick. I decided I would dump my King now. If my West opponent had the Ace, they would probably feel compelled to use it in order to make their bid. If my partner had the Ace, they would surely play it even though it meant trumping me. Anyone who plays a King in the first round must know that it will very likely be taken. My partner should realize that I knew that, and that I must be trying to dump my King. Especially seeing how many bags were at the table, it should be clear I was trying to get rid of a high card which might lead to a bag.

It turned out that my partner was holding the Ace of clubs. Since we were playing open-handed, my opponents both advised my partner not to trump me ("never trump your partner")... when in fact I wanted that to happen!

When I explained to the table my reasoning for playing the King, both of my opponents disagreed. They told me that if they were my partner, they would never overtrump me if they had the Ace - instead they would let me take the trick (in this case, this would likely lead to me earning at least one bag).

This kind of surprised me. In Spades, when there are so many bags on the table, it makes more sense to try to load the other team with all the bags, rather than to try to set them. So, I would try to take as few tricks as possible. I would assume my partner was aware that playing a King when the Ace has not yet been played would almost certainly lead to it being taken, and would therefore feel no need to refrain from trumping the King.

I am curious to know what other people think ... Do you just never trump your partner unless you have no choice? Or do you sometimes trump when it seems clear that they haven't planned on taking the trick?

The server was just down for a couple minutes, to deploy a bug fix. A few people reported that they were getting sent to tables that were "frozen." This should now be fixed... many thanks to the people who reported this issue!

A few days ago, I attended another live in-person card game event - my third!

We had an odd number of people, so it was decided to play a 5-person game of "Oh Heck!" while waiting for more to arrive. I have never played this before, and was taught the rules on the fly. I did not have a stroke of beginner's luck, and lost badly. It will take some practice to improve.

After this I moved on to a game of Spades. I had a great partner. We took the lead and never looked back. I knew that one of our opponents was a complete beginner, learning the game as we played. It was only after the game was over that I discovered that our other opponent was also relatively new to the game. So I felt a twinge of guilt. We should have arranged the partners differently so that the handicap was more even.

My last game of the evening was Hearts. I usually do poorly at Hearts... and I kept making errors in following suit or throwing out my card at the wrong time. It didn't help that I was getting tired. I wound up losing that game as well.

Despite the overall loss, I had a great time! For me, the social aspect of card games overrides my success ratio. I'm looking forward to the next event!

I'm currently sitting at the open "private" table described in my previous post. Join in if you feel like playing! (If you're wondering, yes, I'm early!)
 ...

There are three of us at a table now, just need one more!

...
The game is in progress!
...

Well... lost that one. Sorry p!

New table open with 2 seats available.

...

Won that one... new game is in progress!

...

Won the next one... thx p! Onto the next!

...
and won that one too!

Okay, this experiment is over for today.

I want to thank all you wonderful people who joined in! And thanks to my many excellent partners and opponents... thanks to those who patiently partnered with me as I got set. And thanks to those good sports who hung in there to play even when they were getting defeated.

This went so well, I will certainly schedule another one. I will probably play at different games, as well.

If you have any comments, positive or negative, please post them to this blog or write me!

This Wednesday, April 16 2014, from 3pm to 4pm EDT, I will be online to play Spades at a private table at World of Card Games. Even though the table is private, everyone is welcome, so if you are free, come and join us. Keep reading for instructions.

I will be playing the variant of Spades in which players are not penalized for taking bags. Each bag is just worth an extra point, and they don't "roll over" when you accumulate 10 of them.

This variant is only available at private tables at the site. If you want to join my table, set your Spades options so that "Private Table" is checked. Set the private table name to worldofcardgames (all one word), and choose "No" for the "Bag Penalty" option. This set-up is shown in the screenshot here - make sure your settings match exactly!

Finally, hit the "OK" button, and you're ready. Click the Spades panel, and you'll be taken to a Spades game with these settings.

Keep in mind that there are 4 seats to a table. So if we get more than 4 people wanting to play, you may not see me - I may already be playing with 3 people at another table. This variation of Spades is shorter than the usual one, so I'm hoping to play several games over the hour. If you wait around, you will probably get to play a game eventually. I will be tweeting with updates occasionally. Check me out on twitter to find out what's going on: https://twitter.com/WorldOfCardGamz

I'll try to keep an eye on my email during the game, but I may not have time for anything more than very terse support emails.

PS For anyone who is not clear about it, the "Options" button is to the left and bottom of the Spades game panel. It is circled in green in this screenshot:
PPS I've set up a link at worldtimebuddy so that you can match the date mentioned above to your timezone - http://bit.ly/1grMFcO

The "replace robots" feature is back at World of Card Games. You can use it to start a game with bots, and allow humans to replace them as they arrive. Details are in this blog post.

This feature was first added on January 13 2014. But after several hours of good behavior, the site crashed. So I pulled it back, and worked to figure out what went wrong.

I tried with a new version on February 12, but it caused the site to crash too!

This time, I'm pretty sure that I know what was going wrong. With the bug fixed, I think this new version will work correctly. Is this third time a charm? I hope so!

To celebrate the upcoming Easter holiday, 6 new avatars have been added to World of Card Games. Happy Easter everyone!





There's also a small change to the "no bag penalty" option in Spades, which was introduced a couple of weeks ago. Previously the option was "Yes" or "No," which made it very exclusive.

This has been changed to be similar to the "Bots" option. Now, there is a radio button with the choices "Yes," "No," or "Either." The option is turned off by default, which means you can continue to play games in the usual way without doing anything.

If you absolutely love the "no-bag-penalty" variation of Spades and only want to play that way, edit your Spades options and hit "Yes" next to the "No Bag Penalty?" question. If you are happy to play either way, choose "Either."

Note: If you are the first person to be seated at a table, your options decide how the table rules are configured. If the "No Bag Penalty" option is set to "Either" or "No" then the table does not use the new option. If you set it to "Yes," then the table will apply the "No Bag Penalty" rule.

Once seated at a table, you can check what the options are by clicking the "table info" link at the bottom left of the screen:

I've played with the new option, and it's fun! I had to adjust my usual strategy a bit, which has been interesting. Also, if you prefer shorter games, this option makes the game go more quickly.

The site was down this morning for about an hour while it was moved to a new server... sorry for the disruption in service! Everything should be working again. Please let me know if you notice anything wrong.

When I deployed the new "no bag penalty" option in Spades, last week, I didn't quite get it right. Some people noticed that they were being seated at tables where the option applied, even when they had not chosen that option. This is fixed with today's update. If you don't want to use that option, just keep it unchecked. That's the default, too.

My apologies for today's recent outage. The site is back up now! I'm checking to see what went wrong.

[Edit: the problem was due to a power outage at my hosting service.]

[Note! This post has been edited to reflect some small changes to the options dialog that were made April 14 2014. The new changes are cosmetic.]

My mid-March post about a "no bag penalty" variation of Spades caused a little stir, with lots of comments. There were a surprising number of players who wanted to try it. So let's give it a whirl! Starting this morning, you can try out the new variation at World of Card Games.

To explain how the variation works, I quote Pagat: "Some play without any penalty for 10 sandbags - overtricks are simply worth an extra point each." It's that simple. You have to forget about being concerned about accruing too many bags. Their only effect is to give you 1 point each. Otherwise, they don't add up, and they don't roll over with a penalty at the count of 10.

To avoid disrupting the (apparent) majority who prefer playing with the usual penalty, I've added this option to private tables only. You may only play with the new option at private tables.

This is how you set up a private table:

1. On the main page, click on the Spades "Options" button, which is at the lower left of the Spades panel. This opens the options settings dialog (a screenshot is shown above).
2. Click the "Private Table" checkbox. Below this will appear the text "Name: none (change)". Click on the "(change)" link, and enter your table name (it can be whatever you want). If you leave it "none," then no one else can get into it - usually people do this if they want to play with robots, only.
3. Click the "No" radio button next to the "Bag Penalty" setting.
4. Hit the OK button in the dialog, which closes. Your options have been saved!

The next time you play Spades, you'll be sitting at a table with these options applied. Keep in mind that you will need to share your private table name with other people in order to play with them! So for those who are eager to try this out, you'll need to chat with others to find some recruits to sit at your private table and play with you.

I've also excluded these games from the Spades statistics, at least for now. I'm going to wait for feedback before deciding what to do about the stats. I may add them in later on.

I am interested to know what people think about the new option. Leave feedback in the comments section, or send me an email.

And as usual, please report any bugs, should you notice anything strange happening.

"No 29 - lichen" by Kirsty Hall

There's a new game up at World of Card Games! It's called Twenty-Nine. It's a little bit like Euchre, a little bit like Spades. Give it a try and let me know what you think. I suggest running through the tutorial first, and maybe playing a few games with robots, before trying to play with other people. It can be confusing playing with new rules, especially since the cards do not have the "usual" ranking.

And do please report any bugs or problems, if you happen to notice them. I'm starting work on adding another game very soon...

Hi all, the site has been experiencing some brief, periodic outages over the last couple days (right now, too). Sorry about that! I'm investigating with my host, and will post here if/when I find out what is wrong.

Edit: I'm sorry, it's just more network problems at my host! I can't tell you when it will be fixed... hopefully soon. Meantime, I'm sorry for the occasional interruption in your games!

sandbagging near Missouri Route 63

I sometimes get requests to allow new options for variants in the rules of a card game. Recently, I got a request to have an option to play without the penalty for taking bags in Spades.

The standard rule for Spades, according to Pagat, is to keep track of "bags" or overtricks as they accrue. These are just extra tricks taken, above what the team bid. When a team collects 10 bags, they are penalized -100 points, and their bag count is wiped clean.

It seems that "most" players do play with a penalty for bags. Tell me - how do you feel about playing a game of Spades without the bag penalty? Have you ever done this? Opinions, pro and con, are welcome.

Edit: I'm adding this not to make it clear that if this feature is added as a new option, it would be opt-in. So a player would have to edit their Spades options to sit at such a table. There is a similar kind of option for Hearts, right now ("allow first turn hearts").

I've had a number of reports about the site "freezing" on people, or cards piling up in the middle when they shouldn't. This has been happening occasionally since the site came into existence. However, it seems to have become more of a problem in the last couple of weeks.

network switch by kusumsiri

These problems can occur when there is internet "packet loss."  Packet loss is something like static on a telephone line. A human may be able to understand what a person is saying, based on partial delivery of the words being transmitted over a static-y phone line. In contrast, a computer cannot. The internet is designed to re-deliver messages that were interrupted by this kind of static, but it can lead to unusually long delays - a big problem for an online real-time game site, where timing matters.

I have no control over the internet hardware used to transmit messages around the globe... so this problem is not something that I can do much about. The most that I can do is report it to the people who own the computer hardware on which World of Card Games runs - these people are my "hosting service." Usually they resolve the problem, although it can take a while.

I still rely on reports from players in order to become aware of bugs. So I do appreciate getting your feedback!

Last night, I attended my second live, in-person card game event. It's been over a month since my last event, so it's about time.

These games last much longer than an online game. I arrived at 7, left at 9:30, and only had time for one game of Spades. There's no timer at the table, and people are talking and eating... That makes a difference.

My partner and I managed to win the game! It was touch-and-go for a while. I got set when bidding nil; I had a decent hand for a nil bid, but had too many medium-value cards in the clubs suit. Our luck turned later in the game. We were able to set our opponents, and then my partner managed to pull off a nil bid when she was holding the King of Spades! A desperate ploy! Fortunately, I was holding the Ace, and was able to cover her. This nil put us ahead, and undoubtedly won us the game.

These events are a lot of fun... I highly recommend that you get out and play some card games, if you can. Meetup is a great resource for finding card game groups. If you don't have the time, or can't get out, head on over to World of Card Games for the next best thing.

To celebrate St. Patrick's Day, 5 new avatars have been added to World of Card Games... Enjoy!

Hi all - just a note that the site is down at the moment (7:07 PM EST). There appears to be a rather severe problem at my host. I can't even contact them, since they're offline. I'll let you know asap what's up.

Edit: the site's back up as of 7:22 PM EST. I hope it stays that way! My host said they had an issue with an "edge router."

It has been almost a month since the "replace robots" feature was introduced to World of Card Games, only to be removed when a bug was uncovered. Today this feature was reintroduced. I think the bug has been fixed... Give it a try! And please let me know if you experience any issues with this new feature. For more info about how it works, visit the "replace robots" blog post.

[Edit Feb 14 2014: another bug occurred on the same day which caused serious problems, so the replace robots feature has been removed once again. I'll be working to fix it, and it should return in the future.]

There are three new avatars at World of Card Games. Wishing you an early Happy Valentine's Day!

Some players at World of Card Games get frustrated with new users of the site. What do I mean by a "new user"? That's a person who has never visited the site before, or someone who has only played a game or two at the site. They are probably still learning the ropes. They might play poorly, or leave a game quickly because they don't understand what they should do. That can annoy more experienced users, who just want to get on with their game.

Up until now there was not much you could do about this. There's always been an option to play with "Registered Players Only". However, this excludes a lot of unregistered players (Guests) who have been playing card games at the site for a long time, and who just haven't bothered to register. And it includes very new registered users who may have the same issues as an unregistered new user.

Today, I added a new feature which should help with this problem. Experienced users may now choose to exclude new users from their tables. You will find this new setting under the Options panel (screenshot below).

exclude new users option

The option is not checked, by default - to use it, you will have to edit your options.

In addition, newer users are now indicated by the color of their name - it's shown in yellow (the default color for names is white):

new users have yellow name tags

If you see someone with a yellow nametag, the person hasn't been playing at the site for very long. They might be fine players, but they might also act a little confused. It's just a little warning that you might see unexpected behavior.

There's nothing wrong with being a new user; everyone was a new user at one point! But if you're not the patient sort, you probably will want to choose the "Exclude New Users" option. It might save you some frustration.

Finally, remember that you can always exclude specific players in a more fine-tuned way by using the "dislike players" icon. Disliking a player means you won't be seated with them again.

Hi everyone! This is a public service announcement :)

Please let me know about bugs or issues. I love to get bug reports! (This may seem strange - but how else will I know what's wrong?)

I do know that there are some problems with the site, in particular the fact that it "freezes" sometimes. I've been trying to get a handle on that, without success so far. But if it happens to you, it's useful if you notify me - it will give me an idea how often it occurs. And if you can give me any details about the computer or device that you use to play with, all the better.

If you've reported an issue, and it hasn't been fixed yet - my apologies! I have to prioritize bug fixes, and can't always fix something very quickly.

If you report something more than once, don't worry! I don't consider this nagging. It's nice to know that people care enough about World of Card Games to really want the bug fixed.

You can contact me at marya@worldofcardgames.com

After I applied the changes for the "replace robots" feature this morning, the server ran smoothly for about 8 hours. But then something went wrong, and the site started to behave poorly. A big thank you to everyone who alerted me to the problem.

I wasn't able to figure out what went wrong immediately, so I just pulled back the changes and reverted to the previous version of the site. Sorry to have to do that, but it's the safest thing! I'll work on the new feature some more to see if I can figure out what went wrong.

Most of the responses I've had about the feature were positive. So I hope to get it back online soon.

World of Card Games got an update this morning. A new, experimental feature was added: the ability to replace robots with humans. Please let me know what you think, or if you notice any problems due to this new feature. Below, I give you some details about how it works.

Suppose you come to the site and you're sitting around waiting for some people to play with. You'd like to start playing right away, and you could do that by inviting robots. But, let's face it, the robots don't play very well, so you can't have a normal game with them (sometimes humans don't play very well either, but let's not go there...). And once you invite bots, you are stuck with them for the entirety of the game!

That changes, as of today!

click on message box to use the new replace robots feature

When you sit at a table, you will now see an extra message in the lower right corner: "Click here to start game with robots. Humans may replace them later." When you click on that message box, robots will fill all empty seats at the table. Then when any people want to be seated at a table for that game, they will bump a robot. This way, you can start playing right away, and people will eventually replace the bots.

If you sit at a table and don't see the new "replace robots" message box, that would be because you've set your table options to disallow robots.

There's one other, new change that applies if you have specifically set your table options to "Private Table" with the table name "none" - as shown in the screenshot here:
When you choose your private table to be named "none" (this is the default), then no people will ever come to your table. It's intended to be used if you only want to play with robots - no one else will be seated at such a table.

Previously, if you had set up your options this way, it was up to you to invite three robots to the table. Now, your game will start automatically with robots once you sit down at the table. It's just a little more convenient.

Enjoy the new features! As always, feedback is welcome!

davidly wrote in a comment to this blog,

"Not infrequently, a losing player will leave the game as late as during the last hand, the last trick of the last hand, or even before the screen registers their loss...

...this usually prompts a reaction in the chat regarding being a poor sport. But the registered opponents remain--I assume, so that they'll get the win. I have to wonder if they consider that waiting for the next player to happen along is just as unfair as the original player's having left the game in the first place: the remaining players are just as selfishly sticking the new person with an undeserved loss."

Interesting comment!

I don't understand people who leave a game when losing. Don't get me wrong; I don't like losing! But who wants to win all the time? What would be the challenge in that?

I'm a "completionist" - I want to see the game through to its completion. Maybe I'm a little OCD in this respect? I always figured that many others are the same way - the people sticking around at the end of a game just want to finish the darn game, no matter who wins or loses. It had not occurred to me that they are sticking around to score a win. But I'm not the only one waiting to accept my loss; I've noticed many others doing this. So I think there are a bunch of other completionists like me out there.

I'm surprised if it's true that people are willing to sit around waiting for some "sucker" to come in and finish the game, just so that they will get one more win added to their score. Maybe these are the same people who leave early when they are losing?

World of Card Games does not yet have rankings, so your win/loss ratio is something only you will know about yourself - and if you refuse to accept losses, then you must know that your win ratio is high exactly because of your poor sportsmanship in leaving a game early! I find it peculiar that anyone would gloat over a score earned in this manner.

Failing to accept a loss in a simple game of cards strikes me as extremely childish. But you will run into people like this when you play on the internet. I've played in-person games with full-grown adults who take losing very poorly as well, so it doesn't surprise me that people have even worse behavior online.

One of the main reasons I play is because I enjoy the combination of strategizing and socializing. Winning is fun, but I've enjoyed many games where I lose terribly. How about you?

A few months ago, I started collecting statistics on the table options that people are using at World of Card Games. I thought it might be interesting to some people, so I'll share the results here.

In all of the games, the most popular table options are the default ones: robots allowed, do not require registered players, no private table setting. That may mean people don't realize that they can change them, or perhaps they don't want to be bothered. Here's the breakdown by game:

• Hearts: 60% of tables have the default options.
• Spades: 53% "
• Euchre: 56% "
• Go Fish: 94% "

The second most popular option is to use a private table with no table name (table name is set to "none") - this setting is used by players who want to play with robots only. Here's the breakdown for that:

• Hearts: 29% of tables are private, for playing with robots only.
• Spades: 19% "
• Euchre: 22% "

The third most popular option is to forbid robots. Some people really dislike the robot players (I admit, they need improvement!). Here are the statistics for that category:

• Hearts: 7% of tables forbid robots.
• Spades: 11% "
• Euchre: 17% "

Well there you go! Very few people have the "Registered Only" option set. That's interesting. If you set this option, only registered users will be allowed into your table. This may be useful if you want to recognize who you're playing with. Guest numbers change, so if you played with Guest #10 yesterday, they may be labelled as Guest #251 today.

Thanks to everyone who reported the problem with the site! The server is currently down. I've contacted my host, and they tell me they are working on the problem. I'll post with details as soon as I know more.

[Edit: the site is back up as of noon, EST. My host had some problems with their power supply, and then had some hardware issues. Ugh! Many others were affected as well.]

Last night, I met up with some folks for a few card games. This was the first time I ever played Spades or Hearts offline!

It turned out to be a lot of fun. It was a little disconcerting to play with real cards at first, but I found that my "training" from playing at World of Card Games had really paid off. After a bumpy start, I was soon using the same strategies that I've developed online.

dealing a round of Spades

I noticed a few crucial differences between card games on the website and those in real life.

For one, games take longer in meatspace! The dealer has to shuffle the deck and deal out cards, and players have to sort the cards in their hands. The score has to be totted up after each hand. All of that takes longer when the computer is not doing it for you.

In addition, games are more confusing and disorganized in real life! For example, in a game of Spades at World of Card Games, the computer tells you who deals. In real life, it's up to the players to keep track. After many hands of cards have been played, people tend to forget who dealt last. Was it you... or me... or...?? And in Hearts, the computer tells you whether it's time to pass cards left, right, or across, or whether it's a no-passing round. Not so in real life! I realized I've been relying on the computer to do these things, and I found I lost track easily.

Anyway... here's a brief summary of the games last night.

We started with a few hands of 3-player Hearts, since not everyone had arrived and we didn't have a full set of four players. Once we got four players, we switched to a game of Spades. I enjoy Hearts, but I prefer Spades, so I was happy to switch.

My partner and I failed to make our bid, and got set in the very first round - we would have to dig our way out of a negative score. Soon thereafter, we ran into some luck when one of our opponents (I'll call him West) bid nil, and their partner (East) failed to cover. After we set them, we learned that East had not had to cover a nil-bidder before, and didn't realize what she was doing by leading with a low card - so we got an unfair handicap there. At this point, our opponents were in a negative-score hole!

We managed to set our opponents 2 or 3 times, burying them. They never recovered, and we won!

Afterwards, we played another game of 3-player Hearts. By some kind of miracle, I won this game! (I almost never win at Hearts, online.) I snapped a shot of the scores as evidence, see below. For anyone who does not play Hearts - it's a game of trick avoidance, and the low score wins. Notice my opponents tied for second place, which is a bit unusual!


I'm looking forward to more games in real life. But it's nice to be able to sit down and play a game online when I've got the time - no commuting necessary!

How about you - do you play cards in "real life" or only online? If you've never played with others in real life - I encourage you to find a group to play with. It adds a whole new dimension of fun to it!

The server was out for a few minutes this morning while it got a bug fix update.

Sometimes a blank table would appear when clicking into the Hearts game. This bug has been fixed. Please let me know if you see anything like this again!

Also, the robot strategy in Euchre has been tweaked. Previously, if a robot went alone, it had the habit of leading with a low trump card. That's a bad strategy, since the low card would be more likely to get trumped on the first round. This has been fixed.

Thanks to everyone for reporting bugs, and flaws in the robot strategy. There's still a lot of work to do, but improvements will come over time. Meantime, enjoy the games!