World of Card Games

NOTICE: This post was originally posted on Medium, but has later been moved to the official World Of Card Games blog to consolidate all posts.

Recently, I’ve started playing Pokémon Go. Okay, I admit it. I’m hopelessly behind — this game has been out since 2016, for 6 years! I’ve always been curious about it, but never had the time to look into it. I used to play video games as a kid. But as I got older, life got complicated, and I became more of a workaholic. By now, I almost never play games anymore, unless I need to for work!

However, Pokémon Go really piqued my curiosity. The stories I’d heard about it reminded me of a scavenger hunt, and that appealed to me. Off and on, I’d hear about this game, and think it sounded like fun. So finally, I caved in and downloaded the app. It’s available for Android and iOS. And it’s free of charge, although you are encouraged to make “in-app purchases”, something that I’ve found easy to avoid so far.

When I started to play, I had no idea what I was doing. I decided to jump right in and not do any research. Research would take the fun out of it! I’m sure there are people who would read all about the rules and look for “cheat codes” and strategies to get ahead as quickly as possible. That was not me. Well, for one, I just don’t have the time 😄. And for another, I think that would spoil the game for me. I wanted to discover the rules and figure out how to get ahead without any outside help.

I just started by downloading the app and creating an account. It was so easy that I felt silly about how long it had taken me to get around to it. You choose a name, an outfit (yes, sunglasses and all), and you’re ready to go.

It was not so clear what I was supposed to do when I started. I soon discovered some Pokémon monsters, and I finally figured out that I was supposed to capture them by throwing “Poké Balls” at them. You do this by swiping your finger up your phone screen in the general direction of the creature. I was pretty bad at it, since my ball tosses tended to swerve to the right. I still don’t do this very well, and I wonder if I’ll get any better, or if there are any tricks to it. I’ve improved a bit, and I can usually capture the monsters that I find. Perhaps 30% of the monsters that I capture manage to escape, unfortunately. True to my nature, I’ve restrained myself from looking for advice about how to improve my odds. Usually, if a monster escapes, I can keep trying, and eventually I’ll get it (using valuable resources along the way, of course). A few of them take a powder before I can capture them for good.

I captured a few Pokémon just sitting at home, but they turned out to be pretty scarce in my vicinity, and the game got boring. I was quite interested in trying the game outdoors, since I’d heard some fuss about how Pokémon Go used some kind of “augmented reality” to interact with the monsters outside.

Eventually, I had the chance to take the app on a walk. This turned out to be entertaining. The app has a built in real-life map of your area. While you walk around, you can see your character walking along a map of your real-life location. Here and there on the map, you see “points of interest”. I didn’t understand how to use these at first. I’d click on one, and see a monster and a photo of the place. For example, the place might be a library building or town hall. I still don’t know how these places were first input into the app, but I’m guessing these were contributed by players. Speaking as a game developer, having to filter out all the user contributions sounds like a real headache. Many of them must have come from trolls or worse. Oy! But I digress.

Eventually, the app itself gave me a tip that I could “spin” the photo of the point of interest and that would generate some little bubbles that I could tap to collect extra valuable potions and so on. Why do you need potions? To heal your critters when they get hurt in fights!

After playing for a while, I was accosted by a kind of bully who challenged me to a fight. He arrived in a hot air balloon, no less! I could have run away, but decided to give it a try, and accepted the challenge.

It turns out that you don’t do any fighting yourself. Instead, the Pokémon you’ve captured fight for you. In each fight, you can pick three Pokémon to represent you. The bully is represented by three Pokémon of his or her own.

I think I’m fighting correctly, but I’m not really sure. Fighting involves swiping or tapping across the screen really fast, like you’re shooting at the opposing Pokémon. The system chooses an ideal Pokémon group for me, and I just kind of hope that I’m using them the correct way. Sometimes I can choose to apply a shield against an attack, and that often works. Sometimes I see a message that tells me my attack is not very effective, but I don’t know how to solve that problem. It seems some types of Pokémon are more effective at attacking other types. I don’t understand those nuances, yet. Sometimes I win the fight, but I’ve probably lost about 50% of them so far.

Honestly, the battles are not overly exciting. And I’m not sure that I’ll become interested enough in this game to dig into the details of how to improve my chances in these battles. I’m going to keep at it for a while because there’s one thing that I really like about the game. It encourages exercise. You get credit for walking while you play the game.

I can see why this is a problem. After all, we don’t want people strolling down the street with their noses glued to their mobile phone screens. That is a recipe for disaster. The way I deal with this is to take the phone along on a walk, and if I see the opportunity for a battle, I’ll just stop, step to a safe spot to one side of the sidewalk, and play. So far, so good. I do like that the app encourages people to get up and move. It just needs to be used sensibly in order to avoid accidents.

In this respect, Pokémon Go is so different from World of Card Games, where the only opportunity for exercise is between games, or perhaps if you use one of those treadmill desks. Card games have been around for much longer than the Internet, and you don’t need an app to play them, so that’s very different as well. All you need is a deck of cards (if playing Solitaire) and maybe some friends if playing a game like Spades or Hearts. I can see the appeal of Pokémon Go as an alternate type of entertainment. It gets you out of your chair and outside. And there’s a huge world of game items and rules to discover.

In contrast, the rules of card games are generally simpler. Once you figure them out, it’s up to you to try to apply different strategies within the constraints of the rules to try to win the game. I feel like a big part of the fun of Pokémon Go will be puzzling out how things work, and I wonder if I won’t get bored once I do. On the other hand, once I figured out the rules of card games like Euchre, Double Deck Pinochle, and Spades, I never got bored of them. I don’t play very often, but I still find it entertaining and relaxing to play once in a while. Perhaps Pokémon Go will turn out that way, too. Time will tell!

NOTICE: This post was originally posted on Medium, but has later been moved to the official World Of Card Games blog to consolidate all posts.

Here’s an interesting hand of Spades that was sent to me by a player recently (click this link to view a “replay” of the hand or watch the YouTube video by clicking that video link above).

The player, North, at the bottom of the screen, bid nil. I think it was a pretty good nil, with lots of low cards, and only two low spades.

Their weak suit was hearts: 3, 9, 10, J, and Ace. If an opponent tried to set them with a low hearts card, North could duck once. But if another low hearts card was led, they might have some trouble. It all depends on the distribution of cards… does their teammate, South, have too many low hearts?

Turns out that South has the 7, Queen, and King of hearts. It seems like that could work if played correctly. But if you check what happened using the replayer, or viewing the YouTube video, you’ll see something a little strange.

The second trick was led by the right hand opponent with a low card, the 8 of hearts. North ducked by playing the 3 of hearts, their only card that was lower than the 8. This left them with a handful of pretty dangerous cards: 9, 10, J and ace.

At this point, the nil bidder had safely ducked, and the nil would not be set. South did not have to take this trick. Rather, it was an opportunity for South to discard their low hearts card, the 7. In fact, South did something a bit dangerous, in my view. They took the trick with the queen. This left only two hearts in their hand, the king and 7. They could cover one more hearts trick using the king. Once they did that, they’d be stuck with the lone 7 of hearts. If the opponents led another hearts trick after that, North would most likely be set. So it is a mystery to me why South decided to take this trick instead of using the opportunity to discard their low card.

The person who emailed me was surprised and disturbed when viewing the replayer, too. If you view the entire video, you’ll find out just how the hand played out.

I feel that even slightly risky nils are usually worth the risk in Spades. Sometimes, though, your teammate will make a mistake, and your risk becomes higher than expected! In this case, perhaps South got distracted or misclicked a card.

What do you think? Can you think of a legitimate reason for playing the cards like this? Leave a comment here, if so!

NOTICE: This post was originally posted on Medium, but has later been moved to the official World Of Card Games blog to consolidate all posts.

Here’s a screenshot of a hand from a game of Spades that I played at World of Card Games, this week. Check out the scores! There’s a puzzle. What would you bid to win this game?

This is one of my favorite scenarios when playing Spades. Both my team and my opponents are within reach of winning. So we’re probably in the final hand. Both sides need some combination of luck and intelligent bidding to win the game.

In this case, my team has 465 points. The opponents have 472 points. So close! I am last to bid. That means my team is in a stronger position because I’m going to know all the other bids before I have to make my own bid. I like being last to bid! 😃

My left-hand opponent, Atom, bids a reasonable 3. With Ace and King of Spades, he will definitely get 2 tricks. And he’s counting on the Ace of hearts to give him an extra trick. I think that bid makes sense as an opener. He’s also in the worst position. As first to bid, he has no additional information to help him decide whether to underbid or overbid. If anything, he might be a bit cautious in making his bid.

My partner, Optimus Prime, bids 2. At this stage, all I know is that he doesn’t have a very good hand. Too bad, because that may make it difficult for us to win.

However, we got lucky. My right-hand opponent, hitchBot, bid 1. I would argue that this was a mistake. This bid brings their total bid to 4. If they make their bid, they’re going to wind up with a total of 512 points (472 + 4*10). That’s enough to end the game. But there are also plenty of tricks left — 9 extra tricks for our team to take — to help my team beat them. Why 9? Well there are 13 total tricks, and they bid 4, so there are 9 left.

That means that there’s plenty of wiggle room here for me to bid just a little higher and beat their final score. This is why I like bidding last. I just make a judgment call — can I make a bid that’s safe, and that will put my team’s score slightly above the opponent’s score? If so, that’s the bid to make.

In this case, I need to bid something that will put my team above 512 points in order to win the game. If my team bids a total of 5, and then succeeds in taking 5 tricks, we will win the game with 515 points, just squeaking by. So I have to bid at least 3. If I bid 2, my team will lose.

In the end, I wound up bidding 4 to take my team’s total bid to 6 — that’s 1 more than what we needed to win. Why did I do this? I was slightly worried that the other team might try to give us 5 bags. If that happened, we’d roll and lose 100 points. By pushing our total bid to 6, I felt pretty confident that they couldn’t give us 5 bags, although you can never be sure.

If I’d bid 3, our team’s total bid would be 5. To make us roll, the opponent would need to give us 5 bags — so we’d have to take 5 extra tricks! That would mean they’d have to purposefully lose their bid. Many people don’t want to aim for that, even if that means losing the game. Also, ducking tricks is not exactly easy to do. You could accuse me of being overly cautious by bidding 4 in order to avoid a roll, and you’re probably correct.

In the end, my team wound up winning, easily. I was playing against the bots, and they aren’t very clever in their end-game strategy. Too bad! It’s fun to win, but I really prefer the challenge of a smart pair of opponents.

Here’s the hand history for that hand, if you’re curious to see how it played out. What would you have done if you were on the opposing team? If you were in hitchBot’s place, would you have bid nil? Do you think I made a mistake in bidding 4?

NOTICE: This post was originally posted on Medium, but has later been moved to the official World Of Card Games blog to consolidate all posts.

At World of Card Games, if someone is behaving in a way that annoys you, you can hit the “dislike” button next to that player. Once you do that, you won’t be seated with them again.

If only real life were that simple, eh? Sometimes, you’re put in situations where you have to interact with someone who bugs you. Maybe it’s a relative, a coworker, or your boss. There’s no dislike button in life! But there are things you can do about the problem.

One thing that can work is to recognize that you can’t control other people, but you can control how you react to them. So, if you’re letting someone get under your skin, but they’re not actually harming you, then it might be worth looking deep into yourself to try to understand what is bugging you so much about their actions. Is it really something that should upset you? Is it possible that you’re actually the one causing yourself more trouble than the other person? For example, if someone is being rude or disrespectful to you, your first reaction might be to get upset, and to try to force them to be respectful in some way. But unless their rudeness is actually causing you to be endangered, then what harm does it do to you? In fact, in many cases, rudeness just reflects poorly on the person being rude, and it’s not worth wasting your time on. Ignoring people who bother you is a great way to avoid unnecessary stress, if you can find a way to do that.

Another option seems a bit of the coward’s way out, but can be very effective. Just do your best to avoid those who annoy you. Don’t like a coworker? Make an excuse to leave the room when they appear, or be extra busy to stay out of their way. Don’t like your boss? Make a serious effort to get a new job so that you don’t dread getting up in the morning.

Some people find that confronting the people who annoy you can work. Is a coworker tap-tap-tapping away, destroying your focus? Don’t wait for it to become so irritating that you explode in a rage at them. Instead, politely explain the problem. In many cases, people don’t even realize that they’re causing someone else discomfort, and will immediately work to improve the situation — but ya gotta tell them!

Just so it’s clear, in every case above, I’m talking about those who annoy you — not when you’re in real danger. If you’re in danger, seek help from the authorities! We’re talking about annoyances here, not danger.

Do you have a favorite tactic to remain unstressed by the behavior of others? Please share your ideas. And thanks for reading!

NOTICE: This post was originally posted on Medium, but has later been moved to the official World Of Card Games blog to consolidate all posts.

Are you worried that someone at your card table is cheating at the game? You’re not alone! Periodically, I get an email from someone who is convinced that someone is cheating. I’m told I should ban this or that person because they are “too lucky”, or “blatantly cheating”.

In case it’s not obvious, it is possible to cheat at cards online 😃 Look, for whatever reason, some people consider it more important to win than to play fair. I am not one of those people, and I think most people are not. But, you’ve got to realize it can happen. This comes under the category of “things I learned in kindergarten”, sad to say.

This behavior has been going on since time immemorial. There’s an entire Wikipedia page that outlines the different ways that people have cheated at Poker. Among the most obvious things? Unethical types will try to peek at another player’s cards, or mark the cards. And there are plenty more obscure techniques.

Most recently, Ali Imsirovic — a World Series of Poker participant — has been accused of cheating. Sadly, cheating is apparently rampant in the card game Bridge! As soon as something is at stake — large sums of money, or even something silly, like being called #1 — some people won’t blink an eye at doing whatever they can to get that reward. In that NY Times article about Bridge cheaters, we see this quote from an admitted cheater: “I didn’t do it for money, glory, results, victories, some sort of fulfillment, or masterpoints,” she said, referring to bridge’s ranking system. “I did it because it was so, so easy, and so tempting.” If you’re like me, you’re rolling your eyes at this admission.

Marking cards and stacking the deck just don’t work online, but people have discovered other ways to cheat, much to the annoyance of those who prefer a straight, aboveboard game.

Unfortunately, in most cases of online cheating, it’s just too difficult to tell if people are truly cheating, or if they are just really good at the game. If you see someone playing cards in a way that just seems too good, consider that after having played thousands of hands of a specific card game, some people have developed strategies — such as counting cards — that makes them better at the game than your casual player. As much as I find cheating pathetic, I hate the idea that an innocent person might be accused of cheating when they’re simply very good at a game.

What can you do if you are convinced that someone is cheating at your table? Fortunately, at World of Card Games, you can hit the dislike button next to a person to avoid being seated with them in the future. Many Guests (unregistered users) are quite nice, friendly, and decent people. But some people are suspicious of Guests. Any registered player can avoid playing with Guests by setting up their Options that way. And if you just think everyone is out to get you, you can still play against the “bots”. The bots don’t have the best reputation and they are not stellar partners, but let me tell you, they definitely do not cheat.

And if you’re reading this, and you’re a cheater? Please reconsider and take a good look in the mirror. Why are you doing it? In my view, you are harming yourself more than anyone else. I understand when people steal bread because they’re starving. I don’t understand when people cheat to win a game.

NOTICE: This post was originally posted on Medium, but has later been moved to the official World Of Card Games blog to consolidate all posts.

Sometimes, I get an email from a user saying that they can’t sign in to the website.

I know it happens, but I can’t figure out why. Most people do not have this problem. And I’m one of them. I can sign in with no problems in two different web browsers: Firefox and Chrome.

How do I sign in? I click the “sign in” link in the upper right corner of the site. This causes a little panel to open with a place for my username and password, and a button labeled “Sign In”. I click my mouse into the username area, and type in my username. Then, I click the password text input, and type in my password. Then I click the “Sign In” button with my mouse. Voila, I’m signed in!

Here’s a YouTube video that shows how I do this, in case it’s not clear from my description.

One thing I didn’t mention above is that sometimes, a web browser will “remember” my username and password. When I go to the site, and open the Sign In form, those form inputs that I mentioned above will be filled out for me. This can also happen if I’m using a password manager of some sort.

That’s convenient! And I think that in most cases, the browser’s attempt to fill in the form works. However, for some people, it does not, and clicking the “Sign In” button does not work when the inputs have not been filled in manually.

There’s another case where problems can occur. The web browser may “autocomplete” some words for you. For example, you might start to type your username, and the browser fills it in before you can finish typing.

This is another case where a feature of the web browser seems to work for most people, but in rare cases, something goes wrong. So if you’re having trouble signing in, try ignoring the “autocomplete” feature of your browser, and just completely type in your full username and password, and then click the “Sign In” button.

I hope this helps you get signed in to World of Card Games, or any other sites where you’re having problems logging in!

NOTICE: This post was originally posted on Medium, but has later been moved to the official World Of Card Games blog to consolidate all posts.

Here’s a fun puzzle for people who play the card game Spades.

Take a look at this hand of cards that I was dealt recently. Here’s a link to the Spades hand history for anyone who wants to see the full hand.

My partner was first to bid. They bid 6, meaning their hand was pretty good. I don’t know about you, but when I see my partner make such a high bid, my mind immediately thinks “Can I bid nil?”

And if you look at my cards, at first glance, there’s a good argument for a nil bid. I’d argue that I might be lucky to even get one trick if I tried!

I’ve got three spades, but they’re all low. I’m long in hearts, five of them, and the highest is the Jack. And I’ve got three clubs, all low.

If I bid nil, it’s unlikely that I’ll get set in clubs or hearts. What about diamonds, though? There’s the catch. I’m holding the 10 and Queen of diamonds. There are eight cards out there that are lower than my 10 of diamonds: the two through nine. On top of that, I’m also holding the Queen. It seems to me that if I bid nil, I’d very likely get set with diamonds unless I got very lucky.

And in fact, if you look at everyone else’s hands in this hand history, you can see that if I’d bid nil, it would have been very risky. Imagine my teammate leading with the Ace of diamonds. That works fine and I’d get rid of my Queen. Eventually, though, it would be likely that one of my opponents would wind up leading with diamonds. If they’re smart, they’d lead with their lowest diamond, and at that point my nil would be toasted! My opponents both hold diamonds that are lower than the 10, and my teammate doesn’t have any higher diamond to cover the 10. So unless my opponents made a bone-headed move, that’d be the end of my nil.

Bidding nil can so often win the game for you that it’s tempting to do so whenever possible. And it’s fun, to boot! But there’s something else to consider here. Look at the scores. You’ll see that this is an end-game scenario. My teammate and I need to take a total of five tricks to cross 500 points and win the game. Our opponents are far behind us and have no chance of winning if the game ends at this hand.

My feeling is that anyone who bids nil in this case is not playing to win, but just loves bidding nil and taking big risks. My safest bet is to bid one. And that’s what I did.

There’s a risk in that, as well. What if I can’t even take a single trick? It’s possible that my hand is so weak that my opponents would set my bid of one! But I do have three spades, and I’m kind of short in diamonds. I’m going to hope that once all my diamonds are taken, I’ll be able to trump in on a diamond trick. And if that fails, I’m hopeful that my teammate’s hand is so strong that they will take an extra one and cover my bid that way.

Things could have gone differently. The only way that my team could have lost this hand would be if we got set. We got lucky, and I actually wound up taking two tricks, one more than I’d bid. We won! 😃

This is one of the things that I love about Spades. You often need to think — and think again — to figure out the winning tactic. I might have bid differently if the scores were reversed, and we had nothing to lose. I might have made a more risky bid earlier in the game, too.

I hope you have some fun thinking about what you would do if you were dealt this hand of cards! And if you enjoy playing Spades against the computer or other people, give it a try at World of Card Games!