World of Card Games

This morning, the site was updated with a few bug fixes and modifications.

First, the Elo rating has been slightly modified in team games (Spades, Twenty-Nine, Euchre, and Double Deck Pinochle). You won't see much of a change when players with similar ranks are playing against each other. However, if a player with a higher Elo is teamed up with one who has a much lower rating, then the higher rated player will get a little more credit than they did previously. The details are explained on the page which describes Spades rankings. This should help to mitigate the risk of teaming up with a lower-rated partner in ranked team games. Thanks to the player who suggested this to me!

The hand history is now available for Gin Rummy (there's a blog post that describes how the hand history works for Hearts). I've had a couple of bug reports in this game, but have not been able to reproduce the issues. So if you notice a problem, please download the hand history and send it to me. It may help me figure out what is going wrong here

Someone mentioned to me that the Pinochle bots have not been giving an "aces around" bid. If a player has "aces around", it means they have at least one ace in all suits, and indicates a pretty strong hand. If no one has bid yet, a bid of 51 (rather than the minimum bid of 50) is usually taken to signal that the person has "aces around". The bots have been programmed to do this, now.

I'm first to bid, so I'll bid 51, because I have aces around. Now the bots will too!

This update also includes some bug fixes for problems that were reported to me in Twenty-Nine. If you notice any more problems in this game, please report them so that I can make the site better.

Thanks to everyone who reported the outage tonight! I'm really sorry about that... There was a problem at the server and I had to restart it. So far as I can tell, everything is running smoothly now. Please let me know if you notice any other problems.

I've counted up the votes on the proposal to change the rules of the Hearts game. You can read the previous blog post for details. This is a summary of the proposed rule changes, along with the results:

1. Remove the "no-passing" round. There were 37 votes opposed to removing the no-pass round, 14 in favor of it.
2. Remove "shooting the sun" penalty. There were 20 votes opposed to removing the penalty, 30 in favor of it.
3. Remove forcing a person to play the Queen of Spades if hearts have not been broken and they only have hearts plus the Queen. There were 31 votes opposed to removing being forced to play the queen if hearts not broken, 10 in favor of it.

I excluded "maybe" votes when counting. The counted votes include several emails that were sent directly to me, as well as comments on the previous blog post.

I am a little bit surprised at the results, but I guess I shouldn't be too surprised. It stands to reason that anyone who feels very strongly about these rules wouldn't be playing at the site for any length of time. Apparently the one rule that the majority would like changed is the shooting the sun penalty, and this is something that doesn't happen that often.

For anyone who feels very strongly about these rules, I'm sorry. You may have heard this before: I know I can't make everyone happy. While I'd like to make the site infinitely customizable with all possible Options, I can't. Given that a majority are opposed to (1) and (3), I cannot see implementing these as a default. I may implement them as an Option to the game in the future. If I do introduce them as an Option, I'd need to put some thought into how the rule is applied to ranked games. For example, should there be a whole new ranked leader board for Hearts when played with different Options? This seems more entertaining, but is also more labor-intensive.

I have mixed feelings on (2). The main reason that people dislike the shooting the sun penalty is - correct me if I'm wrong - that it ends the game too soon, and depends too heavily on luck. I'm actually surprised that so many people are opposed to this penalty, given that other card games often have a similar rule. For example, in Bridge, there's the "grand slam". Some people play Spades with a special award for winning all the tricks (the "Boston").

If I recall correctly, the one time that I shot the sun, it could have been prevented. What I recall is that I got hit with the Queen. I had exactly one hearts card, the King of Hearts. I played the King of Hearts, someone did not cover by taking it with the Ace, and I then proceeded to take the rest.

In some cases, such as this, the "shooting the sun" penalty seems deserved. I would argue that the "shooting the sun" penalty is so severe that it encourages people to "cover their passes", to pass a low hearts card, and in general play better, strategically.

Please argue with my points in the comments section. I freely admit that I am not a very good Hearts player, and it may be that my impressions about shooting the sun are false.

Hearts Card Game!

The Hearts card game has been around in one form or another since about 1750. With such a long history, it is no surprise that numerous variations have sprung up.

The Hearts rules at World of Card Games require that after cards are dealt, each player must remove 3 cards from their hand and pass them face-down to another player. This is done in a particular order: After the first deal, cards are passed to the left. After the second deal, they are passed to the right. After the third deal, they are passed to the player across from them. And after the fourth deal, no passing is allowed - so you are stuck with the cards dealt to you. This is the "no-passing" or "hold" round.

Another rule is that if you are so lucky as to take all the tricks in a hand, you have "shot the sun", and the other players get a penalty of 52 points. It's a bit like shooting the moon (in which you take all the point cards and penalize others with 26 points), but probably involves more luck than skill.

In addition, there's a rule at the site which says you cannot lead hearts until hearts have been broken, or if you have no other cards except hearts cards in your hand. This rule is painful when you are holding just the Queen of Spades and all other cards are hearts cards. In this case, the rule forces you to lead the Queen! You'll almost always take that trick, leading to a 13 point penalty. Often, getting into this situation is just due to bad luck.

I've had a few requests to change the rules as follows:

(1) Remove the "no-passing" round. The "no-passing" round adds more of an element of luck to the game. You may get stuck with a lone Queen of Spades, which usually doesn't end well! You may also get stuck with a very good set of cards - it's all down to luck.

(2) Remove the "shooting the sun" penalty, so it is treated the same as "shooting the moon".

(3) Allow a person to lead hearts if hearts have not been broken, and they are holding only hearts cards and the Queen of Spades.

I have chatted with Joe Andrews, who is a leading expert in card games, and who ran Hearts tournaments for many years. He told me that the rules above all applied at these tournaments, so that skill was emphasized over luck. This is the reason that I'm proposing the rule changes. In particular, the strategy for passing cards is a huge factor in Hearts, and having a "no-passing" hand adds excessive randomness to the game.

I'd like to get some feedback from players at the site. Please let me know what you think about these rule changes in the comments.

The server experienced an outage yesterday evening at approximately midnight EDT. The site's host was doing maintenance work that was not expected to affect any of the servers, but in fact it did. I'm sorry for the disruption, but there's nothing I could do about it! Here's the message that I got from the site's server facility:

While performing a scheduled network maintenance, an unexpected error condition occurred resulting in a service loss on the public network in several network aggregation zones. Maintenance activities were immediately rolled back and service was restored upon doing so. All systems are now operating as expected.

It is rare for the site to suffer an unexpected outage like this. It lasted for about 20 minutes. By now, things are back to normal. For what it's worth, if I know about an upcoming outage, I always put up a notice at the site one hour in advance of it. But unpredictable hardware problems can disrupt service, on rare occasions. Once again, my apologies! [Note: the few players whose Elo rating was impacted by this event have had their Elo rating restored to its previous value.]

Sorry for the disruption in games this morning! The site was updated to apply a few changes, mainly to the bots in Double Deck Pinochle and Euchre.

The Double Deck Pinochle bots should no longer give a meld bid twice (in some cases, they were doing this). Also, they should not be giving an ace-on-ace leadback in the trump suit anymore.

The Euchre bots were programmed to do a bit better when defending against a loner. They will lead with an ace if they have two of them. This helps to avoid having to decide which ace to discard later in the hand.

A minor change was made to the Hearts bots. This should make them play low-man Hearts a little better.

After this morning's update to the site, you can now play ranked Twenty-Nine!

ranked twenty-nine

There were a few other updates made, as well. In Double Deck Pinochle, the bots now use the "Jack leadback". Click that link to learn more about how it works. There's also a youtube video about the Jack leadback. The bots have had a few other strategy improvements as well. Thanks to those who sent me feedback over the last several weeks!

In addition, players at ranked tables are now allowed 3 minutes to get back to their table before getting penalized (previously it was 2 minutes).

In Euchre, the bots have had a couple of minor strategy improvements. Also, you are now given less time - 15 seconds - to choose the up card or a suit. This seems long enough even for beginners.

Finally, someone wrote to me with a question about meld bidding. This question made me think my original page on Double Deck Pinochle strategy was insufficient. So I've added a new page on meld bidding. Some players will have their own established meld bidding signals, and those may not agree with mine. In Pinochle, what matters is that the two teammates agree about the signals being made. It also helps to be able to read what your opponents are signalling. If you do not know your partner well, you may want to discuss signals with them after the game. There's a "chat" table button for this purpose. You can also send messages to a player (this only works if you have "liked" them).