Card games for a group, with one deck
Everything a standard deck can do for four to ten people, with the rules written out.
One deck of cards is the most useful thing anybody can put in a bag. It weighs nothing, it works on a train, and between these it will fill an evening for anything from two people to ten.
The rules for each are on its own page, written the way you would explain them at the table rather than the way a rulebook would.
13 of them
Blackjack
Beat the dealer without going over 21. Everyone plays against the dealer, not each other.
Blind Bluff
One card each, held to your forehead. You can see everyone's but your own, and you bet on what their faces are telling you. Also called Indian Poker.
Changing Rules
A card game where the cards change the rules, so nobody is ever playing the game they sat down to.
Face Down
Slide a card to somebody and tell them what it is. One of you is lying and one of you keeps it.
Fuck the Dealer
Guess the card the dealer turns over. Guess badly and the dealer pays; guess well and it comes back on them.
Hands Out
A co-op round where everybody can see every hand but their own, and the only help you can give is a hint.
Playing Cards
The standard deck, for whatever the table fancies that is not already in the bag.
Press Your Luck
Turn cards one at a time and stop before the one that ruins it. Nobody ever stops in time.
Ring of Fire
The whole deck face down in a ring round one cup in the middle. Draw a card, do what it says, and try not to be the person who breaks the ring.
Shoot the Dragon Gate
Two cards make your gate. The bet goes down before you see it, then you call inside or outside and the third card settles it. Also known as In-Between, or Acey-Deucey.
Stop the Bus
The drinking one. Guess your way through the deal, hand out drinks off the pyramid, and whoever is left holding the most cards has to ride the bus home.
Texas Hold’em
Two cards each, five on the table, best five-card hand takes the pot.
The Quest
The room invents a disaster, one person at a time, and the cards decide whether it worked.
Questions
What card games work for a big group?
President, Ring of Fire and Stop the Bus all take eight or more and none of them need anybody to have played before. Poker and blackjack are better below six.
What can you use instead of chips?
Coins, matches, sweets, buttons. Anything countable and roughly identical. Nobody has ever needed real chips for a kitchen table.
Are there co-operative card games with a normal deck?
Yes. Hold your cards facing outward so everybody can see everybody else’s but not their own, and play the suits up in order using only hints. It is the best twenty-five minutes a deck of cards can give you.
Put it in your own event
Fayla builds the whole thing around whatever you pick — a scoreboard everybody can see, a shopping list that writes itself, and one link for the group chat.