World of Card Games

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").