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Top Card Games at Poppit

Top  7 cards family card games to play on holiday at Poppit Sands

7. Go Fish

Playing

Depending on the number of players deal between five and seven cards to the players. The remaining cards are spread around in front of the players.

Taking a Turn
Starting with the youngest player, each player as a turn in a clockwise direction.
When it’s a players  turn the player asks another player if they have a particular rank of card. For example, Ceri may ask Tanith  if she has any Jacks. If Tanith has any Jacks, then she must give them all to Ceri. If Tanith has no Jacks then  she says “go fish”.

When you “go fish”  you take a card from the middle

If Ceri can the cards she asked for then, she can ask another player for cards.  This is repeated until she is told to ‘go fish’ and then its the next players turn.

If the player gets all four suits of the same card, they put the cards face up in front of them. If for example Ceri asked Tanith for jacks and was given two from Tanith and already held two then she would put all four down in front of her.

Winning the Game

Go Fish is over when one player runs out of cards or there are no more cards in the pool

6. Pairs

Playing

This is a simple memory game idea to improve your children’s memory.  You can play with between two and six players.  Place all the cards face down in front of the players.

Starting with the youngest. The player turns over two cards.  If they are a pair they pick them up and keep them and turn another two cards over.  If they are a pair then keep them and repeat until a pair is not turned over.

If the two cards turned over are not a pair, then they are turn back to face down and the next player takes  a turn.

When all the cards are picked up the player with the most cards wins.

 

5. Old Maid

Playing

To start with remove three queens from a full deck of cards. The one remaining Queen is known as the ‘Old Maid’ This is the card you do not want to be stuck with at the end of the game.

Deal the entire deck out to all the players. Players put down any pairs they may have in their hand from the deal in front  of them.  The youngest player turns to the player on their left and asked them to take a card from their hand.  If that card makes a pair then they lay it down in front of them and turn to their left and ask that player to take a card.  Repeat this process until only the Old Maid is left.  The player with the Maid is the looser.

4.Blackjack

Also known as ‘21’ and played for money in casinos.

Deal one card face up to all the players in the game, then deal one to yourself facedown. Then repeat dealing one card face up to all the players and one face down to you

The dealer then asks each player one at a time if they wish to stick or twist.  If they stick their ‘score’ is the value of their cards.  If they twist you deal them another card and ask again if they wish to stick or twist.  If the addition of any of the extra twist cards makes their score greater then 21 then they are out of that round.   Repeat until all players are been asked.  Then as the dealer repeat the same for yourself.  The player with the highest score (but not more than 21) wins.

Aces can count as 1 or 11 and five cards in a hand beats all scores.

3. Hearts

 

Object of the game is to not end up with any Hearts or the Queen of Spades.  You need to have 4 players and the deck is dealt to all four players (thirteen cards each)

When all the cards are dealt the players  then  pass 3 cards to the player on their right.  The player to the left of the dealer plays a card and tricks are won based on the rules of whist.  Highest card of the same suit wins.  There are no trumps.

When all the tricks have been won then points are allocated to the hearts and queen of spades won.  Hearts are worth 1 point and the queen of spades 13.

There is once exception to make it interesting.  If you win ALL the hearts and the queen of spades you add 26 points to all the other players and you get none.

More details here

2. Rummy

The object of the game is to form sets of either 3 or 4 cards.  These sets can be either cards of the same value or cards of the same suit in sequential order.  For example  you can have  4,5,6 of Spades or 3 of clubs, 3 of diamonds and 3 of hearts as a set.

To play deal out 7 cards to all the players.  The remaining cards go face down in the middle of the table with the top card turned over and placed next to the pack.  Then the  youngest player starts and can pick the top card from either the face up pile or the face down pile.

If the player decides to keep that card (to make up sets ) they must discard a card to the face up pile.  The next player then takes their turn.  This is repeated until  player has all their cards in two sets and lays them down in front of them.

 1. Knockout Whist

The object of the game is to keep winning tricks until no other player wins a trick on a particulare round.  Start by dealing all the players seven cards.  The youngest player then picks trumps.  Tricks are then played out as per whist rules.

More info here on the exact rules.

On the next round only 6 cards are dealt out and the player who won the most tricks from the previous round picks the trumps.  Repeat with one card less for each round until there is only one player with all the tricks.  If you don’t win a trick on any particular round then you are OUT and wait until the game finishes.