Aidan the Card Shark

As you know, poker is one of my favorite games (and favorite sports to watch on TV). During our painting job, we moved a bunch of stuff around the house and I discovered a book containing 25 kids card games as well as a nice big deck of cards. I persuaded Mommy to pull this out from the other stuff and helpfully dropped it off on Daddy's desk in hopes that he would learn some of the new games. Fortunately, he did. Over the weekend weplayed two new games---both of which I managed to win more often than not. Here they are:

Go Boom

Each player starts with 7 cards. The object is to get rid of all your cards. The eldest hand leads a card and then the other player must match either the rank or the suit. If the other player can't he must draw from the stock until a match is made. High card of the led suit takes the trick and gets to lead the next card. Winner is the player to get rid of all his card with last trick winning in the event of a tie. When a player gets rid of all his cards, he call out "Boom!" as loud as he can.


What's interesting about this game is that it's the first trick-taking card game I've played. I had no trouble figuring out the rules for matching rank and suit, but I don't like it when I have to take a lot of cards from the stock. For one thing, it's pretty hard for me to hold all the cards.

Take Them All

In this game, each player gets 10 cards. The idea is to be the last player holding cards. In addition to the cards in each player's hand, a card from the stock is turned up. The suit of that card is trump---a super-powerful card suit. The eldest hand leads a card. The other player must follow suit if he can, otherwise play trump, otherwise play anything else. High card of the led suit takes the trick unless it is trumped. The winner of a trick gets to lead the next trick AND take a card from the stock. The game ends when one player has no more cards. In the event of a tie, last trick wins.

I crave variety, so I've already thought of a variation on these games. I like to add jokers to the deck. Jokers are super-duper powerful cards---they take any trick in which they are played.

Card playing is great for counting skills although I have, on occasion, referred to a number "2" that I've seen outside the card-playing context as a deuce, which I suppose is a little confusing. I also like to save my queens until the end of the game since queens are really nice---like Mommy.