Card games are fun.
In the standard 52 playing cards, there are 8 different types of games. They are:
Trick-taking
Matching
Shedding
Catch and collect
Fishing
Comparing
Solitaire
Simulation
There’s also a game called Eleusis which has its own category. In Eleusis, players play cards and are told whether the play was legal or illegal in attempt to discover the arbitrary rules made up by the dealer. This game could be anything, including one of the 8 games above.
Let’s define the 8 games above.
Trick-taking: play of multiple rounds, or “tricks,” in which each player plays a single card from their hand and, based on the values of played cards, one player wins or “takes” the trick.
i.e. Bridge, Euchre, and 500.
Matching: acquire particular groups of matching cards before an opponent can do so.
i.e. Rummy and Go Fish.
Shedding: be the first player to discard all cards from one’s hand.
i.e. Crazy Eights, Go Fish, and Tycoon.
Catch and collect: acquire all the cards in the deck.
i.e. War, Slapjack, and Egyptian Ratscrew
Fishing: capture cards laid out on a table by matching them with cards in your hand. (These games aren’t really popular in English-speaking countries.)
i.e. Scopa, Cassino, and Zwicker.
Comparing: compare hand values to determine the winner. Also known as “vying” or “showdown” games.
i.e. Poker and Blackjack.
Solitaire: played by one player in which cards laid out on a table are cleared or made into a more elaborate layout.
i.e. Solitaire
Simulation: specific cards are assigned meanings to simulate the actions of another activity.
i.e. Card Football.
These genres are not mutually exclusive.
There are multi-genre games such as Big 2’s (Comparing/Shedding), Go Fish (Matching/Shedding), and Cribbage (Comparing/Matching/Shedding?).
All these games are played with a standard 52 card deck.
But there are also games played on their own unique set of cards, such as Uno, Phase 10, and Set.
1000 Blank White Cards is a card game with 1000 blank white cards, the rules of which are made up as you play the game. It can be played by any number of players, rules are changed and modified constantly, and gameplay can be outside the scope of a single sitting.
1000 cards. 1000 different rules constantly changing. That’s a lot of fun.
That’s also a lot of cards.
Which means a lot of rules.
You know what else has a lot of cards?
Collectible card games.
The original Collectible Card Game, Magic: The Gathering, contains over 20,000 unique cards.
Now that’s a lot of cards.
Which means a lot of rules.
20,000 to be exact.
That’s a lot of fun.
But it depends on who you ask I guess.