Different variations of playing the top 3 most popular card games

There are so many different traditional card games and every one of them has it’s own variations. Some have 5, other have more than 30. It’s almost impossible to know how to play all of them. Usually we don’t even think about the fact that we can play our favorite game in a different way. I assume that this is happening, because we have one proved way in which we love to play it. We don’t even consider the possibility of trying the card game in a different way. By doing that we are missing the chance to find a new variation of the game that we may like even more.

With this article I want to present to you some of the variations of the top 3 most played card games.

• World’s most famous game of cards — Poker

The first game I wanna talk about is the Poker. Everybody have heard about it, everybody have at least once tried to play it.

There are many different variations, put in different categories according to the way the cards are dealt. Not only they are many, but the passionate poker players keep inventing new ones. Here are the 5 most played variations.

The most popular one is called Texas Hold’em, where everybody gets two cards and a dealer deals 5 more face up cards in a sequence — 3,1,1. The winner is the player who can make the best five-card hand from the seven available ones.

In the variation called Omaha four private cards are dealt to each player and there are five community cards on the table. The goal in the end is to make the best possible hand from all of them.

Seven Card Stud Poker is the second most popular forms of poker. Each player gets seven cards. Some of the cards are face up. There are several betting rounds during the deal. The goal of this game is to make the best hand of the seven cards that you have in the end.

Five Card Draw Poker was the best known mode before Texas Hold’em. Each player gets five face-down cards. After that they have the option to draw cards from the top of the deck. As they do that they must put the same number from their hand at the bottom of the deck. Тhe players may choose to trade in up to 3 . At the end the best five-card hand wins the game.

Badugi is a little bit different from the other kind of poker games. It is played with four instead of five cards and in the end the winner is the player with the lowest set. So the best possible hand is A-2–3–4 with one card of each suit.

• The most popular and social game in the world — Spades

Spades is fun, friendly and strategic 52-card trick-taking game. Currently one of the most played card games in the US, you can play 5 different game modes: Pairs, Solo, Whiz, Mirror and Suicide mode.

If you are someone who wants to depend only on his own skills you can play in Solo mode. This variation of the game is played with four players, but you have separate score from the rest and you are playing by yourself. This is the most common game mode for online tournament play.

If you love the team play game then Pairs is just for you. In this variation, you are playing in pairs and even if you have a bad hand, your partner may have a slightly better one and he can help you to win.

In the Suicide mode one of the players bids Nil, the other must bid at least four. There must always be a nil, and if you don’t say it first and your partner outbids your 4+ bid, you get the nil.

There is also this one called Whiz where you must bid the exact number of trumps you have or bid nil.

Last but not least — Mirror mode, where you must bid the number of spades you have at the start of the game. If you get none, you must bid Nil!

If you want to know more, about how exactly are those versions of the game played, you can read this article about the different variations of spades.

• Hearts — the second most popular game in USA

Hearts is a game played by four players. It is played with a standard 52 card deck. The cards in each suit are ranking from ace (high) down to two (low) and there is no trump suit. The game ends when someone reaches 100 points. At that moment the player with the lowest score wins. Apart from the main rules there are many variation in the secondary rules.

For example there are many variations in which the passing cycles are used.

There are also some players that are playing the game with 12 cards. The remaining 4 are left face down on the table. They are called kitty. The first player who takes a penalty card takes them.

There are also many ways of playing your hand or in other words to play thе leading hearts.

This game is also played with different variations of the scoring system.

There are two ways of playing in fixed partnerships. The first variant is when each team keeps their score together and the second one is when each player keeps an individual score.

Also there are variations in the number of players needed for the game to be played. They may be three or five. Of course in this case the cards can not be dealt even and there are a few remaining cards called “kitty”. There is a special way in which they are dealt to the players.

Before starting this article I had no idea that the card games have so many ways of being played. To describe each one of them in details, I think I would have to write a book. I found some variations of the games that I am definitely gonna try myself. I am sure that, if you make a research on your favorite game most probably you are also gonna find another interesting way of playing it. Furthermore it may be even more interesting then the one that you are using now.

I hope that by reading this article you have learned something new. If you have more than one favorite variations of playing some card game please share them with me in the comments below. I will be more then happy to read them.