Copyright
These pages cover timeless classics and treasures now forgotten,
As published
by Oxford
University Press
and present (a) histories of classic games such as Poker and
Euchre and (b) details of historic games, such as Gleek and Quadrille, that
are now only museum pieces. This project was started at the suggestion
of John McLeod, who tells me that visitors to his unrivalled
Pagat website for the
rules of card games often inquire after the play of some old game that
they have come across in period novels or films or readings in cultural
history.
Some of the descriptions first appeared in my Oxford Guide to Card Games (1990, republished as A History of Card Games in 1991), but I've since been revising them in the light of further research and discoveries. Comments, queries, or suggestions for additional entries always welcome
See also:
Sources and references - used in these pages
A family tree of card games - historical infographic
Technical terms - used in card-play
| Game | Specification |
|---|---|
| Blackjack | Pontoon, Twenty-One, and related point-count games |
| Boston Whist | Ancestral to Solo Whist |
| Calypso | The personal trump game from Trinidad (4pp) |
| Chinese "Leaf" game | Did the Chinese really invent card games? |
| Costly Colours | The colourful cousin of Crib (2/4pp) |
| Euchre | A classic American game of European origin (2/4pp) |
| Gin Rummy | The great game of Hollywood and Broadway (2p) |
| Gleek | An old English of tricks and bluff (3p) |
| Karnöffel | Europe's oldest known card game (2, 4, 6p) |
| Laugh & lie down | An hilarious pairing-off game of Tudor England (4/5p) |
| Loo | A once notorious trick-taking gambling game (3-7p) |
| Losing Lodam | The Gargantuan ancestor of Hearts (3-7p) |
| Maw | The five-fingered game of the Gaels (2-7p, 5 best) |
| Noddy | The knavish ancestor of Cribbage (2/4pp) |
| Ombre | One of the greatest classics (3p) |
| Patience | Origins and history of card solitaires (1p) |
| Penneech | The game that changes trump from trick to trick (2p) |
| Piquet | The aristocrat of card games (2p) |
| Poker | Origins and history of the great American pastime (2-10p) |
| Pope Joan | Introducing "the Curse of Scotland" (3-7p) |
| Quadrille | The courtly ladies' game of 18th century France (4p) |
| Quinto | Invented c.1900 by "Professor Hoffmann" (4pp) |
| Reversis | The 16th-century ancestor of Hearts (4pp) |
| Speculation | Jane Austen's Mansfield Park game (3-7p) |
| References | Source books & essays used for these pages |
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