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!
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Here's a screenshot from a recent Spades card game. Check out the scores: we are nearing the end of the game. My team needs to give 1 extra trick to our opponents in order to roll them. I have no Spades at all:
click image to enlarge
When I first got this hand, I was tempted to go nil, but I didn't like the situation in my Clubs cards; not even one really low card.
So I bid 1, hoping my partner and I could roll our opponents. I really didn't think I'd be able to take much with this hand, given that I had no Spades. Since I had no Spades, I knew everyone else was holding more Spades than usual, on average. I was counting on those Spades to win most of the tricks.
Alas it was not be! Here's the final score:
we got rolled!
I was surprised when I wound up taking 3 tricks! Of course, if I had
bid 3, I probably would not have actually been able to take them. Our
opponents gave me 2 tricks. They discarded a card on one of my Hearts
instead of playing a Spade. And when I played my King of Diamonds, they
didn't take it with the Ace.
Not only did our team not roll our opponents, we got rolled ourselves. We each wound up taking 2 extra tricks (IIRC our opponents had a total bid of 6).
I'm making this post because I'm curious to get comments about what you'd bid with the hand above. You can see the situation. It's near the end of the game, and I'd like to bid 5 so that we could possibly end with a win, but there's no way I'd get 5 points out of my hand. Possibly I should have bid 2? But we still wouldn't have won, even if we hadn't rolled. Anyone have a better idea?
A number of players have requested that they be given the ability to completely block chats. Maybe they find them distracting, or just don't type fast enough to chat effectively. They just want to play cards, that's all.
That's fine with me, and I hope that they are not being given a hard time if they don't chat... it's everyone's right to remain silent, isn't it, after all?!
Now, these players can easily ignore chats by checking the "Hide All Chats" checkbox in their Settings area. You find your Settings by clicking on your user name in the upper right corner. The new checkbox is encircled in green in the screenshot below:
use "Hide All Chats" to block chats at World of Card Games
Other players tell me that there are one or two players whose chats annoy them. They'd prefer to avoid these players' chats. There's something for these players, too. There's now a little "volume" control beside each player other than yourself. If you want to block a single player's chats, click that volume control. It stops the player's chats from being shown.
If you want to undo this action, use the "Manage Chats" area shown under your Settings in the screenshot above.
use the "Hide Chats" icon to block an individual player's chats
Please keep in mind that just because you cannot see a player's chats does not mean that they are not chatting!
Kick Players
Finally, there's also a new feature that has been added specifically for players of the game Twenty-Nine [and other team games]. I've had a number of people tell me that they want to be able to kick players from a table. This is the internet and there are times when someone comes in who is extremely ill-behaved. Everyone at the table agrees that this is the case, and wants them out, but their only recourse is to dislike the player and leave. This is more painful in Twenty-Nine than in other games because Twenty-Nine is a very long-lived game. Imagine playing at a table for 1 hour, when a troll comes in and starts harassing you...
For these people, I've added back the "kick player" feature. If there are four human players at a table and three players have all disliked the same, single player, then that player is ejected.
If you wind up being ejected, you may very well know why. I expect that this may get used to eject slower players in addition to trolls. I'm sorry that this can happen, since I don't think slow players should be penalized. Personally, though, I'd rather not be sitting at a table where 3 other players don't like me. So I think it's fair enough to add this feature now.
I'm asking for feedback about new Hearts options. If you've played Hearts at World of Card Games, you may have noticed that there's an option to "Allow First Turn Hearts":
allow first turn hearts option
The default rules require that you cannot play Hearts on the first trick.
However, if you choose this option, it is allowed, provided that you do not
have any Clubs in your hand.
Over the last two years, I've had requests for several other options:
Someone would like to see the Omnibus Hearts option, described at Pagat: it applies a bonus to the player who takes the Jack of Diamonds. That person gets 10 points deducted from their score, even if someone else shoots the moon or sun.
Someone has a house rule that disallows passing the Queen of Spades. The idea is that by passing the Queen of Spades, two players know where it is, giving them an unfair advantage over the other two players. I haven't seen this variation before.
Another user would like to see a shorter version of Hearts, in which the maximum score is perhaps 56. This would let people play a quick game when they don't have so much time.
A player requests that when the Queen of Spades is played, Hearts should not be broken. Only when the first Heart card is played should Hearts be broken, allowing others to lead with Hearts.
Someone is interested in seeing a redeal option which would work as
follows: if a new player takes a seat that has a high score, then with
the agreement of all players, the game would be reset. I'm inclined to
oppose this option, because it seems to me that it's about the same as
having everyone leave the table and start over.
What do you think? I cannot promise that I'll have time to implement any of these in the near future, since I have a number of issues to address that are high on my to-do list. However, it helps to know if a majority of players want a specific option, so I can prioritize accordingly.
If you have your own favorite option that you don't see here, post it in the comment section!
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.
The server was down for a short time early this morning to apply a few bug fixes: in particular, the game timer that had been added with the last update was buggy, and is now fixed. Also, in Firefox, some people noticed a player's name hanging around (literally, attached to their cursor) after they clicked into a game from the list of tables. This has been fixed.
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.
