When someone sets their book down on the table, everyone gets quiet. That’s how addicting Hand and Foot is. It forces you to build up your points in secret yet try to get rid of your card. Meanwhile, you pretend that your hand doesn’t have any deadwood. It’s a mathematical pressure cooker with hidden intentions … Read more
You hear it at the card table. Someone slams their cards down and the table goes quiet. That’s the cue in gin rummy; the hand is over and now comes the math. This is where arithmetic meets skill, and a basic rule misinterpretation can transform a winning hand into a costly embarrassment. There’s no need … Read more
Scoring is simple in most card games; add up the points at the end of each round. But with Samba Canasta, you have to manage your points carefuly. One minute you’re sitting pretty with a few hundred points, and the next, a natural canasta changes table flow for a massive five-hundred point swing. The instability … Read more
The math behind canasta scoring will get people arguing. There’s so much to keep up with: meld values, opening minimums, wild card limits. While playing, you has seven cards in your hand and you’re trying to figure out all that while also taking into account joker deductions for any unmelded card left at the end … Read more
When you have a twenty-one card hand and see that it’s not shaping up properly, don’t panic. Your gut instinct told you something else would of been on the table. So there are all these ranks and suits in a mess, and you’re wondering, “Is this really a sequence or am I just imagining things?” … Read more
You’ve been there before. There’s the table, the cards are down, and the points add up looking good enough to win it all. Heads turn, eyes stare, and you count points against your opponents. It’s crunch time: one wrong addition turns a winning hand into a losing one. This is what makes folks go for … Read more
Gin is a special kind of quiet among the rest of the cards at the table. You get points for the hand. There is also a sense that momentum shift as soon as somebody says “gin.” That one good undercut or knock throws the score in your favor before anybody has even finished there drink. … Read more
