Card games can be quite handy and lovely for those who are into ‘cards’. Even though some are not into card games, the experience is popular with quite a number of us while growing up. The friendship, the love, the fights, and getting back together the deck of cards have brought in each of our lives cannot be overemphasized.
Can just two people enjoy card games? Yes, all card games are made to be played by two or more people. Card games are inexhaustible as there are varieties of games that can be played using the deck of cards. This article, however, focuses on the major card games that can be played by two players.
Imagine you have a full deck of cards lying somewhere in your home and you have a friend around who does not want to play a PlayStation. What sort of card game would you bring to the table for your entertainment?
This article will solve your problem. Endeavor to read from the beginning to the end because you might just learn a new card game here.
GiIN RUMMY
The first on the list in this article is the Gin Rummy. Forget about how it sounds, this card game is one of the most exciting two-player card games.
To play this game, you need an opponent, that is, it is developed to be played by two or more players. You are required to have a 52 deck of cards as well. To play Gin Rummy, one of the players will assume the position of a card dealer (or card distributor). This distributor (dealer) player will shuffle a 52 deck of cards and then deal out 10 cards to each player with the cards faced down. Each player can then pick their 10 cards, go through what has been dealt them without allowing the opponent to see what cards they have.
After dealing the cards, the dealer picks the remaining part of the 52 card deck, places it in the middle of the play area or between the opponents with all the cards facing down, picks the last card, and turns the face up so both players can see just what is on the last card.
This new card facing up for everyone to see is called the discard card, and it will eventually grow in number to become the discard pile of cards.
The opponent (the one not dealing with the cards) will be the first player. He/she will have the chance to either pick up the card in the discard pile and replace it with either of the 10 cards he/she is holding on to, or pass the turn and do nothing.
The dealer, who is not the second player, can then either pick from the discard pile as well, do nothing or pick from the deck of cards (blindly).
So where is the competition in this? Well, it gets better. The aim of Gin Rummy is for a player to get to 100 points before their opponent.
How do you score points? Well, the pre-aim of each player is to have all 10 cards in a combination of Threes (Three cards of 2, Three cards of 5, etc ). the other way around this is to have all your cards follow a serial either back or forth (for instance, 2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9 or 9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2). If all your 10 cards follow the serial perfectly, then you have made a GIN, which is the ideal hand. Points are then calculated thus: A GIN gives you 25 points and with the addition of your opponent’s unmatched card number’s sum.
Any of the players can fold at any time even while winning, and when this happens, the player that folded will only get a point equal to the difference between his total points and his opponents’ points. If the opponent wins the game, they will also get the same point with the addition of the difference between the unmatched cards of the players.
HIGHER OR LOWER
Are you good at guessing or should I ask, are you a psychic? Well ‘higher or lower’ will help you sharpen your psychic abilities.
To play the game, one of the two players must act as the dealer. The dealer shuffles the 52 cards and then deals all the cards to each of the players equally facing the table (or the ground depending on where you are playing).
The non-dealing player starts first by picking the topmost card from his deck and placing it face-up for the opponent to see. The opponent is expected to guess whether the card himself/she will draw will be higher or lower in number than what has been drawn by the first player. After stating his/her guess, the dealer (second player) is expected to also draw his/her card and place it atop the first public card. If the guess goes wrong, the two players keep trying. If the guess is right, the player will pack all the cards in the public pile and add them to his/her deck.
The game continues until one of the players owns all the 52 cards.
CRAZY EIGHT
The crazy 8 is a fun card game that requires at least two players to play. From 52 decks of cards, 5 cards are dealt with each player face down. The remaining pile of cards is left face down in the middle of the opposing players. From the stockpile, the last card is removed and dropped faced up for both players to see, forming the first card in the discard pile.
Each player in the game aims to do away with all the cards as fast as possible. To discard your cards, you need to play a card that corresponds with the card left open in the discard pile, either by number or by suit. Take, for instance, if a 5 of hearts is the last card in the discard pile when it is your turn to play, you can play another 5 of hearts or spade or you can play any number of hearts that you may have, 7 of hearts, 4 of hearts.
If you have not matched the number, you can either pick a card from the stockpile of cards or play an 8 card. Anyone can play the 8 cards anytime and the water suit is on the 8 players will be the suit followed until the suit is changed or another 8 with a different suit is played.
After a predetermined time frame, the player with the lowest number of cards wins. A winner can also emerge if a player has discarded all the cards in his/her hand.
There are several other card games for two players which includes the likes of :
Kaboo
Cribbage
Poker
Egyptian rat screw
Blackjack
Kings in the corner and so on.
