News about World of Card Games, the website for card players who love Spades, Hearts, Euchre, Gin Rummy, Double Deck Pinochle, Twenty-Nine, 3-5-8 (aka Sergeant Major), and Go Fish!
Get news about updates on Facebook, and Twitter.
When the site was updated last weekend, a few bugs had crept into the build. These bugs have been fixed with this morning's update. Here is the bug list for those who might have noticed:
Your Elo rating was not viewable for some games in your stats panel, and also at unranked tables. It also didn't show up for unranked tables in the list of tables. No worries! Your Elo rating wasn't lost, but it could only be viewed at ranked tables.
Sometimes a table would vanish from the list of tables even though it still had seats available.
In addition, the Hearts bots have been informed of the new "Tournament Rules" Option, and they will now play a bit better at such tables.
Thank you to everyone who reported these bugs! You help to make the site better by bringing these problems to my attention.
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.
There was a bug in the update to the Hearts ratings last week which caused the losing players to get more points deducted from their Elo ratings than they should have. My apologies, I know some of you take the ratings very seriously!
I've applied a fix to the problem this morning. Anyone who would like to get their Elo ratings set back to where they were last Wednesday need only write to me and ask (marya@worldofcardgames.com). To do this, just make sure that you send me the email from the address that you registered with, so I know it's you. I will do this for people up until the end of November.
[Edit on Nov 24 2015: Only a small number of requests to reset Elo ratings have come in. After receiving negative feedback on the way this was being done, I decided to just go ahead and do the work to perform a bulk update of Elo ratings. Anyone who played at a ranked table prior to Nov 17 has had their Elo rating reset to the value from Nov 11, before the bug was introduced. To be clear, this was only done if it led to an increase in their ratings - I did not reset values that were lower.]
As usual, there's a tutorial to get you started (click on the "Tutorial" button to the lower right of the Double Deck Pinochle panel on the main page). You might also want to read my Double Deck Pinochle page for beginners.
If you have not played this game before, you may want to play with robots first, to get comfortable before playing with real live humans.
I've tested the game quite a lot, but there could be bugs. If you try the game and find any problems, please let me know by sending an email to me - marya@worldofcardgames.com - or leave a comment here.
There's a Hearts tutorial at World of Card Games. It's designed to
introduce you to the mechanics of Hearts, but barely scratches the
surface when it comes to strategy. The help box has a few hints, too, but it's minimal.
After playing a few hundred games of Hearts, I think I've gotten a little better at it. This was, in part, due to some players who discussed strategy with me. Thanks to those who did so in a polite manner, you know who you are!
It's nice to share, so I wrote up a discussion of Hearts strategy and placed it on the site. There's a comment section where anyone can add their thoughts, and you can also tweet them, or post in the comments section here. Or send me an email. I will rewrite sections of that page based upon feedback.
I want to mention that I like the way that some more expert players try to help those who are beginners to the games. I don't mean the ones who mock beginners! I mean the ones who offer to explain or give a short tip to people who confess to being inexperienced. It benefits everyone to help those who are new. They are more likely to continue to play when people are friendly and not mean. It's a win-win to get more good players to your favorite card game.
I had some postcards made up as advertisements for World of Card Games. The goal is to publicize the site. I don't know if this is a good strategy, but I feel there are probably a lot of people out there who would enjoy playing cards online, and they just don't realize it's an option. This is an attempt at letting people know about the site. I plan to drop the postcards off at senior centers, libraries, and similar places.
If you enjoy playing at World of Card Games, and you know some place where you could leave a card or two, write to me! My email address is marya@worldofcardgames.com. I can mail a few to you.
Here's the image that I used for the postcard (a big thanks to Karen for that glowing testimonial!). It's 8.5" x 5.5":
postcard for World of Card Games
I had these cards printed up at Staples.com. Here's a mini-review: The process is fairly easy, and the price is reasonable (about $60 for 100). I have two caveats: when you upload your image, they display that image in a way that makes it look as if it is too wide and will be cropped at the sides. If you decided to get postcards from them, you should upload your image and ignore what's displayed there. Proceed through their print process all the way until near the end, just before you have to buy. You'll be shown a "real-life" picture of your image which looks wider than what you'd seen on their edit page. The latter is just a draft and is not accurate (at least it was not for me).
It took only a few days after ordering for me to get my cards in the mail. I'm pretty happy with the result overall! Three of the cards had some bleed (red into black) but the rest are fine.
I've set up a Spades League called "Jungle Gym Spades" at MyLeague.com. Here's the FAQ for those who are interested or curious.
jungle gym spades league
(1) What is a league, and why join?
Probably the primary reason that players join a league is to engage in a more competitive form of fun than they find in the casual, "pick-up" games online. MyLeague maintains a ranking system where you can compare your status with others. However, if you are not competitive, keep reading!
Another reason to join is to find like-minded players. A number of people at World of Card Games have set up private tables where people meet and play on a regular basis. You'll never know about these great, fun people unless someone gives you the "secret handshake" to get in. My hope is that joining the league will allow more of these folks to find each other and arrange games at specified times. MyLeague has a forum where you can post messages, and you can send "emails" to other members of the league without having to reveal your own, personal email address.
(2) What is a tournament?
A tournament is just a scheduled game... In league play it is a series of scheduled games. Several teams play, and then the winners are pitted against each other. They might go through several rounds of games before the two last winning teams face off against each other. These types of tournaments will only happen if we get enough players who are interested in it. I don't think we need tournaments to make the league a success, but I hope they will happen if enough people would enjoy them.
(3) Why do I have to join yet another site to be in a league?
In the long-term, I hope to have support for tournaments, personal messaging, and even forums directly at World of Card Games. I've opened the league to make these things available for people who'd like them right now.
(4) I don't play Spades, I want a Euchre league!
Okay! Anyone can start a league, so go ahead! If you'd rather not be an admin, I'm willing to start leagues for Euchre, Hearts, Twenty-Nine, or any of the other games on the site, if there's an interest.
(5) What happens if I join the league?
Time will tell. We need enough players in the league to make it useful to everyone. My suggestion is that after joining, you should post a message to the forum introducing yourself to everyone. That way people can get familiar with others in the league.
(6) Are there any other requirements?
You should be a registered player at World of Card Games. You need a valid email address to sign up with the league - be sure to use the same user name that you use at World of Card Games (that's user name - you do not have to use the same email address, although it is probably helpful to do so). If you have any trouble joining, please write me at marya@worldofcardgames.com. One final thing: All league members are expected to be civil to each other! Please be as polite and tolerant to everyone as you would be if they were standing in front of you.
This morning, I noticed that there are now 1000 Facebook likes on the World of Card Games main page! Thanks to everyone who gave it a thumbs-up, and who helped it to grow by inviting their friends to come play as well!
World of Card Games has a new game! It's called "Sergeant Major" or "3-5-8". It's a 3-player game. So there are no teams: every man for himself, so to speak. Every player is given a target number of tricks that they have to take. If you fail to hit your target, you will be at a disadvantage, because you'll have to trade away your high cards to other players. So take as many tricks as you can!
The game is fairly straightforward. Any rules that need to be followed are applied by the site, and you get instructions about what to do next. So don't be afraid to try this new game. You can try out the tutorial and then play some games with bots to get the hang of it before challenging people.
In other news, the server had a little bit of indigestion this afternoon, so I restarted it. I took advantage of this little hiccup to deploy the new game. I'm very sorry for the disruption in games! Please let me know if you have any trouble with the site now.
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!
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:
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]
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.
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
