World of Card Games

Here's another post for the Euchre fans! Have you ever heard about the "reverse next" strategy? Recently, I've explored some statistics about how often "reverse next" can be used, and whether it works. Click that link to get the full scoop!

my partner, the dealer, is going to pass on this up card, a jack...

I'll call clubs with only the king and nine of clubs, using "reverse next" strategy. Will it work??

I've collected some statistics about the "consider" phase in Euchre, as played at World of Card Games. If you like Euchre, you might enjoy reading this! Click the link above to see more.

what are your chances of calling trump if you're the dealer?

[Edit: I added a second page of stats - check out part II.]

I've written a page which describes a tactic that can be used to stop a loner in Euchre. Anyone who plays Euchre may want to take a look at that. What do you think?

It can be so frustrating when your opponent "goes alone" - you may feel like you should just give up. But a lot of loners are not certain, by any means. You should always play your cards as if you are defending against a loner that can be foiled. The page I linked to above is one of my thoughts about how to do it. I've seen it work many times!

There was a server outage this afternoon from about 5:25 PM EST (Boston USA time) to 5:47 PM EST. It was a networking problem at the server. My apologies for the interruption in your games!

You can now see the pass direction and the number of hands that have been played in Hearts. The pass direction is shown as "<" for left, ">" for right, and "^" for across. If there was no passing, then only the hand count is shown.

Here, the pass direction is right, and it's the first hand of the game

If this feature bugs you, you can turn it off! Click on your user name in the upper right corner, and scroll down in the panel that opens until you get to the "Hide Widgets" line. Check the box next to Hearts, and the feature will turn off.

Turn off the feature by checking "Hide widgets" for Hearts in your User Settings

This morning's update fixed a couple of minor bugs.

In addition, I tinkered with the strategy of the Spades bots. There are small changes in their bidding and also in the way that they play.

Please keep in mind that sometimes it's hard to know what to bid, and the bots are not perfect! If you spot a particularly egregious bidding or playing error, where it's obvious that a bot did something bone-headed in the course of a hand of cards, and you want to do something to help correct it, you can! Please try to remember to download the hand history as soon as that hand is finished. Once you download it, you can send it to me, and tell me what you think was wrong. With this information, I can rework the code to improve the bots.

For those who do not know about the hand history, that is just a small text file with a URL (link) in it. The link is to a "replayer" at World of Card Games. When you copy and paste the URL into a web browser, you will get a "replay" of that hand, showing who bid what, and how each card was played. All the cards will be shown face-up straight from the start. This link is an example of a "hand history".  You can click it to see how it works. But don't click it if you are currently playing a game at World of Card Games; it will not work, in that case.

You can only download the hand history if you are a registered user and signed in. Also, it's only available for 30 seconds after the hand finishes. So grab it quickly if you want to save it! To download it, click the little floppy disk icon that appears near your avatar. You can see that in the screenshot, below:

click the floppy disk icon to download hand history

The site was updated this morning to fix a few bugs.

In Gin Rummy, there was a bug which caused your deadwood to be optimized incorrectly when your opponent declared "Gin". This had been reported to me a few times, but I was never able to reproduce the issue. Thanks to Alagon for reporting it and also sending in the hand history! With the hand history, I was able to reproduce the issue, and then I could fix it pretty quickly. (If you want to download a "replayer" for the previous hand, click the little floppy disk image that appears near your avatar after the hand finishes.)

Marie-Michele has reported a few bugs with the Euchre bots, including hand histories. Those hand histories make it possible for me to fix the problems. Most recently, the bot was seen to delay in playing the right bower to take a trick. This has been fixed. The Euchre bots are now a little bit smarter, and will be better teammates (or opponents!). Thank you, Marie-Michele!