The Best Card Games: Nerts, Fan Tan, Le Truc, Bridge, Euchre

So looking for the best card games. Now what? You can certainly put it quietly and safely on your display shelf, occasionally looking at it out of the corner of your eye to remind you that it is really yours, give an admiring glance at the exquisite tuck case, and get a fuzzy feeling inside knowing that it contains some wonderful cards within. You can even take out the cards from time to time, to feel their embossed and papery touch in your hand, and remind them that they are loved. And maybe you can even take them for an occasional spin with some high flying cardistry magic, or use them for some card magic.

The Best Card Games

How to Play Three Thirteen

This game has several rounds, and the wild card changes every time so you have to pay attention! Fun for a wide range of ages. This is definitely one that our family plays regularly.

Nerts

Nerts is another fun and fast-paced card game! I love this one because there is no waiting for turns. Everyone plays all the time! In my opinion, the game works best with two teams of two (four players). Each team needs their own deck of cards.

Fan Tan

This is a game that my family used to close out card game night because it inherently reorders the deck and leaves it ready to be shuffled again for the next game night. It’s straightforward: the objective is to get rid of all the cards in your hand by playing them in sequence.

Since a seven starts a row for a suit, you can annoy other players who have cards of that suit by holding onto your seven.

Le Truc

This out-of-the-ordinary betting/bluffing/trick-taking game is a 19th century French game using a 32 card deck, and was especially popularized after inclusion in Sid Sackson’s Gamut of Games. A brilliant bluffing game where you use a hand of three cards to play only three tricks, but can increase the value of a hand throughout the game, to bluff and cause your opponent to fold. Be aware of some rule variations. Both the French Le Truc and the Spanish Truc (which has 2 player partnerships) are derived from the older English game Put (2 players), which is a simpler two player bluffing game that I can also recommend.

Bridge

The ultimate classic among trick-taking card games. It is played in partnerships, and gives much room for much skilful play. Contract Bridge is often played in organized club settings, and the bidding and game-play has an extensive series of conventions that can take some time to learn in order to play well.

Briscola

An Italian trick-taking game that is quite easy to learn and play especially as a two player game. Using just 40 cards, the aim is play tricks from your hand of three in order to win point scoring cards. Apparently this is especially good with the five player Briscola Chiamata variant.

Euchre

Extremely popular as a social game in parts of Canada and the USA, Euchre can especially be fun when played in a casual tournament setting. Just 25 cards are used, with the Jacks being powerful “bowers”. One partnership is trying to win the most tricks from a five card hand, with trump determined by a turned up card. Ecarte (2 players) is an excellent trick-taking game that is very similar to Euchre, but better suited for a two player game.

German Whist

An excellent Whist style game for two players. Each player has a hand of 13 cards, and the first phase involves each person playing a card in order to compete for the face up card from the top of the stock (the very first card shown is the trump suit); the winner gets that card, the loser gets the next face-down card. When the stock is gone, you play out your remaining 13 cards, and the player winning the most tricks is the winner.

Hearts

One of the all time classic trick-taking games, where the aim is to avoid taking tricks with Hearts, since these are minus points, while the Queen of Spades is a whopping 13 minus points. There is no trump suit.

Jass

The national Swiss game, playable with two players or in partnerships. This is part of the Jass family which originated in the Netherlands. The wider family includes Belote (French), Klabberjass/Clob (German), and Klaverjassen (Dutch). The Swiss Jass is somewhat similar to Bezique and Pinochle.

How many different types of card games are there?

It is also common to find the same game going under many different names. Depending on what you count as a game, a rough estimate would be that there are between 1,000 and 10,000 games. An classification of the main types of card games can be found on the classified index page of the Card Games site.

What is the most famous card?

$6.7 trillion. That is how much Americans spent using their debit or credit cards in 2019. More than 60% of those purchases were made using cards from Visa, a company that has long dominated the payment card industry.

What is the most popular playing card?

Bicycle is arguably the most well-known brand of playing cards—and not just because they’re budget-friendly. Featuring the iconic winged bicyclist design, these classic paper cards have a nice texture and are easy to shuffle. We also like that they come in packs of two decks, one red and one blue.

What are the 4 types of playing cards?

Today’s 52-card deck preserves the four original French suits of centuries ago: clubs (♣), diamonds (♦), hearts (♥), and spades (♠). These graphic symbols, or “pips,” bear little resemblance to the items they represent, but they were much easier to copy than more lavish motifs.