World of Card Games

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!