Wednesday, January 28, 2015
server update
World of Card Games was down for a few minutes this morning. Sorry for the interruption everyone! It's back up now.
Friday, January 23, 2015
the problem of quitters: part I
Possibly the most frequent complaint that I get at World of Card Games is about people quitting games. I've been collecting some statistics to see how the site is affected by habitual quitters. Here are the results!
The charts below are histograms that show the number of players divided up according to their quitting patterns. Players who rarely quit - between 0 and 10% of their games - are "bucketed" in the first column. Players who quit a lot - 90%-100% of their games - are bucketed in the last column. The rest are divided into buckets between those percentiles.
Private tables are ignored in these statistics, as are tables with only a single human player. Quitting from such tables is not a major problem. On the other hand, if you enter a game and then quickly leave, you are getting counted as a quitter for the purpose of these statistics. So the charts may make things look a little (or a lot?) worse than they are.
Euchre is a fairly quick game - you are usually done in 10 minutes. Quitters are not as big a problem, here.
One noticeable thing is that the games that take longer tend to be affected more by quitting. I do wonder how big a factor this is in quitting.
The charts below are histograms that show the number of players divided up according to their quitting patterns. Players who rarely quit - between 0 and 10% of their games - are "bucketed" in the first column. Players who quit a lot - 90%-100% of their games - are bucketed in the last column. The rest are divided into buckets between those percentiles.
Private tables are ignored in these statistics, as are tables with only a single human player. Quitting from such tables is not a major problem. On the other hand, if you enter a game and then quickly leave, you are getting counted as a quitter for the purpose of these statistics. So the charts may make things look a little (or a lot?) worse than they are.
Hearts is badly hit by quitters. Hearts games are not usually very lengthy, and I suspect this game is one where people quit because they want to avoid a loss.
Spades is also pretty badly affected by quitters. I've noticed that people will sometimes quit when their bid is set (especially if it's a nil bid), or when they get set because they couldn't cover their partner's nil bid. Maybe they fear their partner's ire? I've also noticed people quitting when they are close to losing, here.
Euchre is a fairly quick game - you are usually done in 10 minutes. Quitters are not as big a problem, here.
Twenty-Nine has a huge problem with quitting. However, it's perfectly understandable - it's a game that can take several hours, as the scores of each team ebb and flow. This is just the nature of the game. So far as I can tell, many people enjoy this game, despite the fact that you often just have to quit to get on with your life. It's interesting.
Gin Rummy has statistics that are similar to Euchre. I'm not sure why. It's a 2-player game so it does tend to take less time.
Wednesday, January 21, 2015
new game! 3-5-8 aka "Sergeant Major"
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| photo credit: "358" by Graham Richardson cc license |
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.
Tuesday, December 23, 2014
possibility of a short outage
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!
Friday, December 19, 2014
outage last night
Last night, from about 1:15 AM CST to about 6:10 AM CST, there were sporadic network outages at World of Card Games. My apologies! This was beyond my control - my hosting service had network issues due to a software problem. They seem like a good, reliable service, and they're working on fixing the issue. I don't expect any more problems at this point.
Monday, December 15, 2014
player news - books published
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:
They are currently available in paperback, and will soon become available for the Kindle and Nook. Congrats, Karen! I wish you much success!
Edit Dec 17 2014 - here are the links to the Kindle versions:
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:
They are currently available in paperback, and will soon become available for the Kindle and Nook. Congrats, Karen! I wish you much success!
Edit Dec 17 2014 - here are the links to the Kindle versions:
Sunday, December 14, 2014
site is back up, and there's a new feature - redeal in spades
The server is now up and humming again at World of Card Games! Sorry for the interruption in service.
A new feature has been added to the Spades game. If a player leaves the game, the remaining (human) players are given the opportunity to fold their hand and re-deal. All current tricks taken and bids made are wiped away - the hand is effectively a do-over.
To make this happen, all players must agree to re-deal by clicking the "redeal" message box, which appears in the upper left corner. Redeals are allowed a maximum of 5 times per game.
This is a new, experimental feature. As always, feedback is welcome. In particular, if you notice any problems, please let me know.
[Edit: as of December 27, 2015, you are given 30 seconds to vote for a redeal.]
A new feature has been added to the Spades game. If a player leaves the game, the remaining (human) players are given the opportunity to fold their hand and re-deal. All current tricks taken and bids made are wiped away - the hand is effectively a do-over.
To make this happen, all players must agree to re-deal by clicking the "redeal" message box, which appears in the upper left corner. Redeals are allowed a maximum of 5 times per game.
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| redeal link in upper left corner |
[Edit: as of December 27, 2015, you are given 30 seconds to vote for a redeal.]
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