World of Card Games

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

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The game is in progress!
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Well... lost that one. Sorry p!

New table open with 2 seats available.

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

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

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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.