Denexa Games

The blog of Denexa Games, maker of the world's most awesome plastic playing cards.

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Null product

Rules of Null product

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Can you discard a red three

Well, it depends on the game, of course!

Assuming you're referring to Canasta, which is usually what people are talking about when they're talking red 3s, no, you can't. Red threes get automatically laid on the table and replaced. The only way a red 3 can end up in the discard pile is if the initial upcard happens to be a red 3 (which is fairly rare, as only 4 out of the 108 cards in the deck, or 3.7% of them, are red 3s).

Discarding one isn't a very good idea anyway—they're worth 100 points and you can always lay them down (even if you haven't made your initial meld). If you were wanting to do it to freeze the discard pile, you can accomplish that far more cheaply by discarding a wild card (which is only worth 50 points for a joker, or 20 points for a 2).

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House rules for card games

One of the most beautiful things about the standard 52-card deck of cards is its flexibility. Not the physical flexibility the cards have when you bend them—though it comes in handy when you try to shuffle, of course! Rather, what makes playing cards so great is their flexibility to be used for many different sets of rules. We tend to think of card games as discrete entities, saying we're playing "Whist" or "Poker" or "Cash" or "Canasta". In reality, these are just names given to a certain set of rules dictating the course of game play. When you look closer, however, you discover each of these labels covers a fair bit of ground, and there are a few different versions of each game in circulation.

Unfortunately, card games' flexibility can also be their downfall. A lack of clarity regarding the rules can cause chaos at game night. Disagreement over rules and accusations of cheating can cause hard feelings between old friends. If not handled properly, this can break up a long-standing game group!

Fortunately, avoiding such a scene is easy with a little forethought. All you need to do is establish a set of house rules to make sure everyone is on the same page when it comes to the game.

Avoid chaos at the card table with effective house rules

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Toepen

Toepen is a simple and quick trick-taking game for three to eight players, although it is most frequently played with four. In Toepen, only the last trick counts—whoever wins it wins the entire hand! However, it's possible the game may not even get that far. A player who feels confident can raise the value of the hand in the middle of play, and if everyone else decides to drop out rather than keep playing, they can win the hand that way, too!

Toepen is most frequently played in the Netherlands, where it is often played as a drinking game. Accordingly, the game is set up so that one player loses rather than one player winning—the losing player is the one who buys the next round of drinks!

Rules of Toepen

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Schnapsen

Schnapsen is an Austrian two-player game where players score points both by melding and by taking tricks. It's a cousin of the classic American game Pinochle, having likewise descended from the German game Sixty-Six. Thus, like its parent game, it plays a lot like a pared-down version of Pinochle.

Schnapsen forces players to rely on their memory of cards they've won—a player can go out when they have scored 66 points over the course of a hand. However, a player has to keep a mental tally of what they've scored to know when they're able to go out. Schnapsen can be a very exciting game because a player is rarely completely out of the game—big come-from-behind wins are always possible!

Rules of Schnapsen

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The Spokane Press, Washington, July 13, 1903

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The stakes are high

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The White Stag is famous for leading heroes into danger…

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“I’ve been raking it in all night…”

“Sir, for the third time, those are not poker chips, they’re certainly not valid here, and you’re running the tables. Please leave.”

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Not sure what we are playing but next turn I am all in.

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Do you intend including a description of French Tarot, which is a more fun version of Bridge, on your Blog? I am a novice when it comes to French Tarot - but it has some fascinating gameplay - and as it's so unusual , I thought it might be worthwhile doing a write-up on its rules and strategy.

Since the cards we sell are the standard international 52-card deck, our blog focuses on games played with that deck (or that can be made out of one or more of those decks). Since the Tarot games use a very different 78-card deck that includes 4 face cards per suit and a unique 21-card trump suit, they’re not really in our wheelhouse.

John McLeod’s excellent Pagat.com (which we use as one of many sources for our game rules) has a section on Tarot games that covers French Tarot, as well as several other games played with the Tarot deck.