Title

Social card games

Release date

16th November 2021

Category

Thema

WDMC

Card games

BIC

wdmc

Card games

UDC

794.4

Card games

DDC

793

Indoor games and amusements

BISAC

GAM002000

GAMES & ACTIVITIES / Card Games / General

AAT

300222738

card games (activities)

Ebook

ISBN

978-1-9168759-0-6

Paperback

Format

A5, 210 × 148 mm, 5.83 × 8.27"

Page count

182

ISBN

978-1-9168759-1-3

Sample

sample.pdf

Large print

Coming soon

Ken Hutton was born and raised in the beautiful chalk downlands of Dorset in the south of England by his northern parents. He has spent time living and studying in Manchester and Berlin, which despite the benefits of city life convinced him that Dorset is where he feels most at home. Social card games is his first book.

As a child he spent a lot of time exploring the countryside with his friends, getting his socks wet and his knees muddy. On rainy days or during breaks at school they would often pass the time playing card games. As an adult he tends to keep his knees clean and his socks dry, but he still walks out in the Dorset countryside and still occasionally plays card games with some of the same old friends he used to play with.

He has also played with family, young and old, and with passing acquaintances both at home and abroad. In Social card games he has distilled the hundreds of games he has experienced to forty-two of the best for social play. Just one or two new rules or concepts are introduced with each game. You can find out more at ‘kenhutton.uk’.

Ken Hutton was born and raised in the beautiful chalk downlands of Dorset in the south of England by his northern parents. He has spent time living and studying in Manchester and Berlin, which despite the benefits of city life convinced him that Dorset is where he feels most at home. Social card games is his first book.

As a child he spent a lot of time exploring the countryside with his friends, but on rainy days or during breaks at school they would often pass the time playing card games. He still occasionally plays cards with some of the same old friends, as well as with family, young and old, and with passing acquaintances, at home and abroad. In Social card games he has distilled the hundreds of games he has experienced to forty-two of the best for social play. You can find out more at ‘kenhutton.uk’.

Ken Hutton grew up in Dorset in the South of England and has also lived and studied in Manchester and Berlin. He played cards with friends and family as a child and still plays with some of the same friends; with family, young and old; and with passing acquaintances, at home and abroad. His first book, Social card games, distils the hundreds of card games he has experienced to 42 of his favourites for passing the time with good company, introducing one or two new rules with each game. You can find out more at ‘kenhutton.uk’.

Ken Hutton grew up in Dorset, England and has lived and studied in Manchester and Berlin. Through life he has played hundreds of different card games with friends, family and acquaintances, at home and abroad. His first book, Social card games, describes 42 of his favourites. Learn more at ‘kenhutton.uk’.

There are some notable absences here: no poker, bridge, 500 rummy… How did you decide what games to include?

Short answer

I came up with a few constraints for what I consider to be a social game:

• gambling shouldn't be necessary to make the game fun,
• every rule should add fun or depth – not just be something extra to remember,
• turns shouldn't take too long – especially if other player's turns have been short,
• and no game should be too similar to another game in the book.

Long answer

I knew I didn't want to write an encyclopedia with every game I could think of or research. So as I wrote up some of my own favourite games I thought about what they have in common and wrote down some constraints for what to include in the book.

I don't gamble myself so I decided to write what I know and stay away from games that require gambling to make them fun: pontoon and blackjack for example. There is no true poker game in the book, but I think liar poker is a more light-hearted way to enjoy bluffing and daring to push your luck.

Bridge has never appealed to me as there are quite a few rules to remember that don't seem to add any fun or strategy. In my opinion quinto is a better game that gets more strategy out of simpler rules. The same principle ruled out a few other games, typically those described as the national game of somewhere: scopa, skat, twenty-five…

The title followed from these constraints and prompted another: none of the games should have a player saying sit back everyone, my turn is going to take ages! That ruled out 500 rum for me, and also manipulation rummy games like carousel and Machiavelli.

A lot of good games are excluded simply because they are too similar to one of the other games. For example, there are a lot of contract rummy games around but I just included my favourite version of Liverpool rummy. If a reader who has tried that wants to play with people who know a similar game, it will be easy enough to adapt.

What's your favourite game?

I suppose it depends who I'm playing with. Some of the later games in the book get quite complex and those are great with other people who play a lot of cards. The last two are Chinese games: big three and looking for friends. Those are great when everyone is interested enough.

But often it's more fun to play simple games that are quick to explain. Compendium in the woods combines six of these into a single match where the loser of a game loses one life and then picks the next game. That tends to be fun even with people who have never played cards before.

I really enjoy the other compendium matches too, I think it's nice to switch between different kinds of game.

Did you include any games for two players?

Two of the best known games for two players would be cribbage and gin rummy, both good games. In north west England they play a two player whist called blind don, which a cousin introduced my to when I was a kid. That works for two players because you can see some of your opponent's cards. Then there's a great game from Afghanistan called panjpar that's quite unlike anything I'd played before researching for this book.

The book also contains duo's compendium, a way of playing four two player games as a single match. That's my favourite way to play cards against one opponent.

A lot of the simpler games also work fine with two players, and they're not all just for kids. They don't tend to last very long without more people though. Recommended player numbers for all the games are shown in the contents.

Why did you decide to self-publish?

Social card games is designed as much as it is written and I wanted to work on cross referencing, indexing and page layout as I wrote the book. I had learned a thing or two about typography software over the years, so I felt I had the right skills to do this. It seemed like traditional publishers all wanted a plain text manuscript that they could hand over to their own designer. That's if they would take the book on at all – none of them seemed to be asking for submissions of this sort of book.

It didn't always feel like the right choice. Perhaps if I'd known who in the publishing world to talk to I wouldn't have had to do so much on my own. Also, although I thought I knew what I was doing, I had never worked on a full book before. I made a few poor decisions early on that cost a lot of time later, so it's been a real learning experience. But I like to think that will pay off in the long run.

Did you design the cover yourself? All the guides to self-publishing warn against that.

Yes I did, and I can't say I wasn't warned. I was going to pay someone else to design the cover and to draw the illustrations, but during the Covid lockdowns I had been drawing a lot and I have studied graphic design in the past. So I gave it a try, still thinking I would hire someone to do it properly later. But I was pleased with my work and got some positive feedback, so I'm sticking with it.

You acknowledge some Free Software that you used to create the book, would you recommend it to others?

I would, yes. It's worth saying though that software like this is very different to the slick graphical applications that most people are used to. It isn't obvious how to take the programs I list and make a book any more than it's obvious how to take a carpenter's tool kit and make a wardrobe. Finding the project's home pages would be a good start, or installing them on a GNU/Linux system and reading the info or man pages.

Some day I'd like to write a book about how to write and publish a book with tools like these. There are things I want to do differently on my next book though, so that's just a pipe dream for now.

• Preface
• Introduction
• Shuffling the pack
  • Pack to pack
  • The overhand shuffle
  • The Indian shuffle
• Playing in turn
• Snap 2–10 players
• Packs, packets and piles
  • Tricks
  • Standard deck
• Capture games
  • General rules for capture games
  • Snapping
  • Battle
• Slapjack 2–10 players
• Ranks and suits
  • Red cards and black cards
• Beggar thy neighbour 2–10 players
• Snip snap snorem 2–10 players
• High cockalorum 2–10 players
• Hands, pitches, rounds and matches
• Spoons 2–13 players
• Dealing the cards
  • Elder and Younger Hands
• Squiffy dancer 2–12 players
• Fishing games
• Bundles 2–4 players
• Order of suits
• Cuckoo 2–12 players, or more
• Cheat 2–6 players
• Drawing from the stock
• Melding runs and sets
  • Pairs, prials and mournivals
• The rummy family
• Conquian 2 players
• Go fish 3–6 players
  • Happy families 3–6 players
• Open, blind and hole cards
• Match points
• Thirty one bones 1–5 players, or more
• Trick taking games
• Trumps
• Deciders and rubbers
• Seven card whist 2–7 players
• Brag melds
• Stop the bus 2–8 players
• Knockout whist 3–7 players
• Keeping score
  • A basic score sheet
  • Rounds and match points
• Basic rummy 2–6 players, 3–4 best
  • Some alternative rules
  • Block rummy 2–6 players
• Honours and penalties
• Special cards
• Shoot the moon 3–10 players, or more
  • Never-ending space race a league for even more players
• Fixed partnerships
• Partnership whist 4 players in fixed partnerships
• Seven rummy 2–5 players, 3 best
• Zero sum game
  • Counters
  • Account sheet
• Gambling
• Laugh and lie down 3–6 players
  • A five player pitch
  • Pitches with 3, 4 or 6 players.
• Trick brag 3 players
• Cribbage board
  • Pegging scores
• Tally sheet
• Cribbage 2–4 players
  • Fixed partnerships 4 players
• Fishing for Tens 2–4 players
• Contracts
• Oh hell 3–7 players
  • Scratch scoring
  • Oy vey scoring
• Blind don 2 players
  • Traditional scoring
• Leagues
  • Hotfoot league 4 players to mix up a fixed partnership game
  • Outsider league 5 players to mix up a fixed partnership game; 3, 5 or 7 players in 2 player pitches
  • Clockwise league 4 or 6 players in 2 player pitches
  • Seat-swap league 4 players in 2 player pitches
  • Rotating team league Any number of players in 2 teams playing 2 player pitches
  • Winner(s) stay on Slightly more players than would normally play a game
  • Loser(s) stay on Slightly more players than would normally play a game
• Sum-run-set 2–5 players
  • Fixed partnerships 4 players
  • League play 4–5 players
• Gin rummy 2 players
  • League play 3–7 players, or more
• Widow
• Quinto 4 players in fixed partnerships
  • League play 4–5 players in varying partnerships
  • Original scoring
• Duo's compendium 2 players
  • League play 3–7 players
  • Two pair's compendium 4 players in fixed partnerships
  • Disloyalty compendium 4–5 players in varying partnerships
• Shedding games
• Pinhead 2–12 players
• Burden compendium 3–5 players
• Rhapsody 2–12 players, or more
  • Never-ending rhapsody 2–12 seats, players come and go
• Poker melds
• Wild cards
• Liar poker 2–8 players, or more
• Compendium in the woods 2–8 players
• Own trumps 2–4, 4 best
• Panjpar 2 players
• Liverpool rummy 3–5 players
• Temporary alliances
• Plantagenet 5 players with temporary alliances
• Auctions
• Bigwig 3 players with temporary alliances
• Solo whist 4 players with temporary alliances
• Big two 4 players
• Trump ranks
• Player rank
• Contesting twenty 4 players in fixed partnerships
• Tractors and set flushes
• Big three 3–4 players, 3 best
• Looking for friends 5–12 players with temporary alliances