Card Shark

Day 28: Learn a new card game

In a world that is so overrun with electronic gizmos, that power our existence, the magnificent simplicity of a deck of cards tends to get lost in the shuffle. (Pun most definitely intended!)  I don't believe today's youth would have the slightest idea what to do with themselves if they didn't have their headphones jammed in their ears, their cell phones tightly affixed to the palms of their hands, and an internet connection always within reach.  While I am not completely without technological reliance (I realize even now I am writing this blog on a laptop computer with a wireless internet connection) I do have certain old fashioned principles that I cling to.  So, in my efforts to try new things I decided to try something not so new.  I wanted to learn a new card game.

There have been plenty of times that I have had nothing but time and a deck of cards.  Of course I know how to play the classics like Go Fish and War and the ever popular Solitaire (but sadly I tend to play that more on the computer than with actual cards) but after a couple rounds of those it gets old fast.  I needed to broaden my card game horizons.  I needed to fill my arsenal with plenty of rainy day recreation.

My friend's mom (hooray for Mary Love) was on hand to provide me with some card game guidance.  First she attempted to teach me some new-fandangled form of solitaire.  There was something about every other card being face up, and instead of having the aces at the top you start with a random card from the deck and you build up or down based on that number.  And if that weren't confusing enough, to make the game just that much more challenging you could only go through the cards in your hand once.  Let's just say that between the statistical disadvantage of only going through one rotation of the cards and the sheer complication of the game I deemed it unwinable and we moved on to our next lesson.  (Even Mary told me she found that she started winning more when she started shuffling less, but I guess it's not really cheating if your playing against yourself)

I liked the next game much better.  My wise instructor referred to it as Peanuts, but apparently it is known by many aliases including Nertz (which I think I have heard of before).  I decided that neither of these names had anything to do with the game so I was going to give it yet another possible name, one that made sense with how the game was played, making both the game and the name much easier to remember.  I call it Thirteen due to the thirteen cards in your stack that you are attempting to get rid of.  Thirteen, as it will be referred to from here on out, is a game of speed.  You are attempting to get rid of all the cards in your stack before your opponents get rid of theirs.  Each player has their own cards they play on, but then there are also community cards that everyone plays on.  It's fast, it's furious, it's playing card mayhem at it's finest.

Now, apparently there is also some sort of scoring system devised to continue the competition hand after hand.  If you didn't get rid of all your cards then you must count the ones that are left in your stack, then there was some sort of a point value assigned involving multiplication and math that required too many fingers.  In my opinion I think the scoring system was just devised by someone who lost, so they found a way to delay the verdict of victory.

Aside from the confounding complexity of the solitaire game and the superfluous scoring system of Thirteen (or Peanuts or Nertz or whatever you decide to call it) I found the games to be an entertaining way to pass some time.  Its amazing how many different things you can do with 52 cards and some imagination.  However, as we discovered as our night was winding down, that whole 52 card thing is kind of optional.  It turns out one of our decks only had 51 cards and about 8 of those were duplicates.