World of Card Games

This morning, the site was updated with a few bug fixes and modifications.

First, the Elo rating has been slightly modified in team games (Spades, Twenty-Nine, Euchre, and Double Deck Pinochle). You won't see much of a change when players with similar ranks are playing against each other. However, if a player with a higher Elo is teamed up with one who has a much lower rating, then the higher rated player will get a little more credit than they did previously. The details are explained on the page which describes Spades rankings. This should help to mitigate the risk of teaming up with a lower-rated partner in ranked team games. Thanks to the player who suggested this to me!

The hand history is now available for Gin Rummy (there's a blog post that describes how the hand history works for Hearts). I've had a couple of bug reports in this game, but have not been able to reproduce the issues. So if you notice a problem, please download the hand history and send it to me. It may help me figure out what is going wrong here

Someone mentioned to me that the Pinochle bots have not been giving an "aces around" bid. If a player has "aces around", it means they have at least one ace in all suits, and indicates a pretty strong hand. If no one has bid yet, a bid of 51 (rather than the minimum bid of 50) is usually taken to signal that the person has "aces around". The bots have been programmed to do this, now.

I'm first to bid, so I'll bid 51, because I have aces around. Now the bots will too!

This update also includes some bug fixes for problems that were reported to me in Twenty-Nine. If you notice any more problems in this game, please report them so that I can make the site better.

Thanks to everyone who reported the outage tonight! I'm really sorry about that... There was a problem at the server and I had to restart it. So far as I can tell, everything is running smoothly now. Please let me know if you notice any other problems.

I've counted up the votes on the proposal to change the rules of the Hearts game. You can read the previous blog post for details. This is a summary of the proposed rule changes, along with the results:

1. Remove the "no-passing" round. There were 37 votes opposed to removing the no-pass round, 14 in favor of it.
2. Remove "shooting the sun" penalty. There were 20 votes opposed to removing the penalty, 30 in favor of it.
3. Remove forcing a person to play the Queen of Spades if hearts have not been broken and they only have hearts plus the Queen. There were 31 votes opposed to removing being forced to play the queen if hearts not broken, 10 in favor of it.

I excluded "maybe" votes when counting. The counted votes include several emails that were sent directly to me, as well as comments on the previous blog post.

I am a little bit surprised at the results, but I guess I shouldn't be too surprised. It stands to reason that anyone who feels very strongly about these rules wouldn't be playing at the site for any length of time. Apparently the one rule that the majority would like changed is the shooting the sun penalty, and this is something that doesn't happen that often.

For anyone who feels very strongly about these rules, I'm sorry. You may have heard this before: I know I can't make everyone happy. While I'd like to make the site infinitely customizable with all possible Options, I can't. Given that a majority are opposed to (1) and (3), I cannot see implementing these as a default. I may implement them as an Option to the game in the future. If I do introduce them as an Option, I'd need to put some thought into how the rule is applied to ranked games. For example, should there be a whole new ranked leader board for Hearts when played with different Options? This seems more entertaining, but is also more labor-intensive.

I have mixed feelings on (2). The main reason that people dislike the shooting the sun penalty is - correct me if I'm wrong - that it ends the game too soon, and depends too heavily on luck. I'm actually surprised that so many people are opposed to this penalty, given that other card games often have a similar rule. For example, in Bridge, there's the "grand slam". Some people play Spades with a special award for winning all the tricks (the "Boston").

If I recall correctly, the one time that I shot the sun, it could have been prevented. What I recall is that I got hit with the Queen. I had exactly one hearts card, the King of Hearts. I played the King of Hearts, someone did not cover by taking it with the Ace, and I then proceeded to take the rest.

In some cases, such as this, the "shooting the sun" penalty seems deserved. I would argue that the "shooting the sun" penalty is so severe that it encourages people to "cover their passes", to pass a low hearts card, and in general play better, strategically.

Please argue with my points in the comments section. I freely admit that I am not a very good Hearts player, and it may be that my impressions about shooting the sun are false.

Hearts Card Game!

The Hearts card game has been around in one form or another since about 1750. With such a long history, it is no surprise that numerous variations have sprung up.

The Hearts rules at World of Card Games require that after cards are dealt, each player must remove 3 cards from their hand and pass them face-down to another player. This is done in a particular order: After the first deal, cards are passed to the left. After the second deal, they are passed to the right. After the third deal, they are passed to the player across from them. And after the fourth deal, no passing is allowed - so you are stuck with the cards dealt to you. This is the "no-passing" or "hold" round.

Another rule is that if you are so lucky as to take all the tricks in a hand, you have "shot the sun", and the other players get a penalty of 52 points. It's a bit like shooting the moon (in which you take all the point cards and penalize others with 26 points), but probably involves more luck than skill.

In addition, there's a rule at the site which says you cannot lead hearts until hearts have been broken, or if you have no other cards except hearts cards in your hand. This rule is painful when you are holding just the Queen of Spades and all other cards are hearts cards. In this case, the rule forces you to lead the Queen! You'll almost always take that trick, leading to a 13 point penalty. Often, getting into this situation is just due to bad luck.

I've had a few requests to change the rules as follows:

(1) Remove the "no-passing" round. The "no-passing" round adds more of an element of luck to the game. You may get stuck with a lone Queen of Spades, which usually doesn't end well! You may also get stuck with a very good set of cards - it's all down to luck.

(2) Remove the "shooting the sun" penalty, so it is treated the same as "shooting the moon".

(3) Allow a person to lead hearts if hearts have not been broken, and they are holding only hearts cards and the Queen of Spades.

I have chatted with Joe Andrews, who is a leading expert in card games, and who ran Hearts tournaments for many years. He told me that the rules above all applied at these tournaments, so that skill was emphasized over luck. This is the reason that I'm proposing the rule changes. In particular, the strategy for passing cards is a huge factor in Hearts, and having a "no-passing" hand adds excessive randomness to the game.

I'd like to get some feedback from players at the site. Please let me know what you think about these rule changes in the comments.

The server experienced an outage yesterday evening at approximately midnight EDT. The site's host was doing maintenance work that was not expected to affect any of the servers, but in fact it did. I'm sorry for the disruption, but there's nothing I could do about it! Here's the message that I got from the site's server facility:

While performing a scheduled network maintenance, an unexpected error condition occurred resulting in a service loss on the public network in several network aggregation zones. Maintenance activities were immediately rolled back and service was restored upon doing so. All systems are now operating as expected.

It is rare for the site to suffer an unexpected outage like this. It lasted for about 20 minutes. By now, things are back to normal. For what it's worth, if I know about an upcoming outage, I always put up a notice at the site one hour in advance of it. But unpredictable hardware problems can disrupt service, on rare occasions. Once again, my apologies! [Note: the few players whose Elo rating was impacted by this event have had their Elo rating restored to its previous value.]

Sorry for the disruption in games this morning! The site was updated to apply a few changes, mainly to the bots in Double Deck Pinochle and Euchre.

The Double Deck Pinochle bots should no longer give a meld bid twice (in some cases, they were doing this). Also, they should not be giving an ace-on-ace leadback in the trump suit anymore.

The Euchre bots were programmed to do a bit better when defending against a loner. They will lead with an ace if they have two of them. This helps to avoid having to decide which ace to discard later in the hand.

A minor change was made to the Hearts bots. This should make them play low-man Hearts a little better.

After this morning's update to the site, you can now play ranked Twenty-Nine!

ranked twenty-nine

There were a few other updates made, as well. In Double Deck Pinochle, the bots now use the "Jack leadback". Click that link to learn more about how it works. There's also a youtube video about the Jack leadback. The bots have had a few other strategy improvements as well. Thanks to those who sent me feedback over the last several weeks!

In addition, players at ranked tables are now allowed 3 minutes to get back to their table before getting penalized (previously it was 2 minutes).

In Euchre, the bots have had a couple of minor strategy improvements. Also, you are now given less time - 15 seconds - to choose the up card or a suit. This seems long enough even for beginners.

Finally, someone wrote to me with a question about meld bidding. This question made me think my original page on Double Deck Pinochle strategy was insufficient. So I've added a new page on meld bidding. Some players will have their own established meld bidding signals, and those may not agree with mine. In Pinochle, what matters is that the two teammates agree about the signals being made. It also helps to be able to read what your opponents are signalling. If you do not know your partner well, you may want to discuss signals with them after the game. There's a "chat" table button for this purpose. You can also send messages to a player (this only works if you have "liked" them).

Hey everyone,

USAFvet plays Double Deck Pinochle at World of Card Games. Recently, he shared with me the story of how he came to play that card game. I enjoyed reading it, and I thought others might too! So I asked his permission to publish it on the site. Here it is - USAFvet's Double Deck Pinochle story.

Marya

ranked double deck pinochle games

After this morning's site update, you can now play ranked Double Deck Pinochle games at World of Card Games.

If you enjoy more competitive play, ranked games may be for you. You may want to brush up on your Ace-on-Ace leadback and meld-bidding skills. Please be a good sport! If you are a Pinochle expert, and your partner is playing poorly, don't abuse the chat functionality by being rude. Instead, ask them if they would like some tips. Chatting about strategy while you are playing a game is considered offensive, unless everyone agrees to it. But you can chat freely at a "chat table" after a game, and you can use the site's messaging feature to send short messages to players that you have liked.

By the way, there's a good discussion board, Power Pinochle, for Double Deck Pinochle enthusiasts. You will find many signalling and bidding tips explained there.

The "bots" have been updated in Double Deck Pinochle, so you should notice some improvement in their signalling skills. The bots also got tuned up Euchre.

Here's another major change that you may like: 'notifications' have been added to the site. If you have used Google Calendar, you may have seen these before. A notification is just a tiny popup to let you know about something happening in your browser. At World of Card Games, a tiny popup will appear when your game starts (but only if your browser is in the background)! There's already an audio alert for this event, but a few people have told me that this is not always helpful because their sound is not on.

You can opt out of notifications if you prefer not to get them. Since these types of alerts are built in to your browser, they are not like the annoying pop-ups that some sites have. Your browser can be used to turn them off whenever you like.

Please let me know if you experience any bugs due to the recent update. I plan to update the Pinochle bots with more strategy improvements in the future. If you have any suggestions for improvements you'd like to see, feel free to contact me.

Today, we have a guest blog from DevilDoc about the nil bid in Spades. I have added some links to definitions of "jargon" terms to help beginners. There's also an intro to nil bidding at the World of Card Games website. - Marya

The nil bid in Spades is the strongest of all the bids one can make. Worth 100 points, it represents 20% of the total game score if your partnership makes it. It also costs your partnership 100 points if you get set plus the penalty for your partner’s bid.

How to bid a nil: The ideal hand should be rich in distribution; i.e., singletons, doubletons, and voids. Ideally, you don’t want any honor [face] cards but if you have any, they should be protected by at least two low cards. The maximum number of spades should not exceed three, with no higher card than the Jack (25% probability of being set). While some will use the Queen of Spades, your probability of being set rises to 50%.

How to defend a nil: The bidding player needs to focus on his loser cards. You want to discard your highest cards as soon as safely possible. If your partner is running a long suit or you have a good distribution, that is the easiest way to get rid of your riskiest cards. The bidder’s partner needs to lead out with the highest card of his longest suit and keep running that suit, from high to low cards if possible. If the bidder’s partner’s hand is weak, he should focus on what the opponents are leading to see if they can cover your cards.

- DevilDoc

The server was updated this morning to apply some changes.

In Gin Rummy, you can now click the "sort" button to sort your cards from left to right or vice versa, by rank.

The sort button toggles between ">" and "<"

Also in Gin Rummy, when you pick a card, it will get added to the right of your hand. This suggestion was made by someone who uses the site on a tablet. It's easier to move a card when you can grab the entire thing and not just an edge. I hope this change won't disturb others too much. I usually dislike making changes to the user interface, but I think the pluses outweigh the minuses, in this case.

[Edit: I see only negative comments below... is there anyone who uses a tablet and likes the new placement that puts your picked card to the right? Feedback from all is welcome!]

There's now a "tick" audio alert to accompany the hourglass that indicates you are timing out.

This was added to help people who may have been away from their computer when the "gong" sound indicated that the game was starting. If someone doesn't have the browser open to World of Card Games on their desktop when the game starts, they may be timing out while they are doing something else. For example, their browser might be minimized, or they have another browser tab open for reading the news, etc. This new little audio reminder will help to solve that problem.

Thanks to the player who suggested adding this!

With this morning's server update, your cards are now fanned wider by default in Gin Rummy. They look like this, now:

Gin Rummy cards fanned wider

You can go back to the old fanning by unchecking "Fan Cards Wider" in your Settings:

user Settings are opened by clicking your user name

The "Fan Cards Wider" user setting is checked by default.

This is what happens when you uncheck the "Fan Cards Wider" setting:

Gin Rummy with "Fan Cards Wider" unchecked

The server was also updated with some bug fixes. The ability to move your cards around in Gin Rummy had broken in some touchscreen devices. This is now fixed. Also, if you reloaded the web page while sitting at a Gin Rummy table, your cards got resorted. This no longer happens.

Another general bug fix was made so that the F5 key now works to reload the page in your browser when you are sitting at a table.

Finally, the messaging system was broken during last week's update, but it is now functioning again.