The play ends when some or all of the players have run out of cards to play. Each player has a hand of cards and a move consists of playing out one or more cards to the table to achieve some effect. This is by far the largest main category. ![]() From time to time further groups of related games have been identified and added. This classification scheme seems to be working reasonably well - nearly all the traditional games being added to the site can be fitted into one of the existing groups. Some of the subgroup divisions may take into account the objectives of the game as well as the mechanism. These categories are subdivided into groups and subgroups. I use just five main categories: outplay, exchange, comparison, layout and other. A result is that in this classification games that are historically related, being derived from each other or having a common ancestor, tend to end up together in the same group. Sometimes complications are added to make the game richer sometimes games are simplified to speed them up, and sometimes ideas are introduced by analogy with other games. As card games evolve and change, players tend to keep the basic mechanism of a game they know, but vary the objectives or some of the details. The aim in this classification is to put together games which have similar mechanics of play. Apart from mechanisms and objectives, a few other groupings such as domino games and solitaire games have been included. At present it includes mostly traditional games, though some items from the invented games section have been included where they naturally fit into existing categories. Since the full diagram is very complex and hard to read, the browser allows the user to navigate around the network viewing a neighbourhood of a selected node. The network browser has been provided for those who would like to see the classification used on by game mechanism and objective set out as a diagram. Finally there is a discussion of other types of classification that might be added in future. I have also tried to put together a list of children's card games, though opinions on what games are suitable for children may differ widely. I have included a section on classification by theme though this is generally more suited to proprietary games played with special card decks or tile sets, most traditional card games being abstract in nature. The indexes by name and by number of players also indicate the type of cards or tiles used. AS well as an alphabetical index by name there are indexes of games by numbers of players and by the countries or regions where they are played. On this website I have also provided several other classifications that may be helpful. Some games employ more than one mechanism and have more than one objective, so when one tries to represent the relationships between games and classes as a diagram, the result is not a tree but a rather complex network in which games may belong to several overlapping or intersecting classes. Another type of classification is by objective, based on what the players have to do in order to win. what you do when it is your turn to play. A third is the practical motive of finding a suitable game to be played by a particular set of people, or using a particular kind of cards that happen to be available.įollowing Parlett, the main classification used to organise games on this web site is by mechanism: games are categorised according to the process for playing them - i.e. Another is to help in the study of the history of games, by finding common elements that may indicate that one games has been derived from or influenced by another. One is to make it possible to search for a game with certain characteristics, without necessarily knowing what it is called. Nevertheless there are several reasons to attempt to organise the thousands of different card games that exists into classes of games that have something in common. This does not work so well for games, because in many cases games evolve by absorbing ideas from other games of different types. Because traditional card games tend to evolve gradually, through a series of modifications and improvements, it is tempting to try to develop a taxonomy analogous to those of animals and plants, in which the evolutionary process can be represented by a family tree. An excellent discussion of the difficulties can be found in David Parlett: The Oxford Guide to Card Games (Oxford University Press 1990) pages 61 to 64. ![]() There are many different ways to classify card games, none of them entirely satisfactory. Equipment (type of cards, dominoes or other tiles).
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