Card Games

Card Game News, Reviews, Editorials & Unboxings.

A card game is any game that uses playing cards as the primary device with which the game is played. Thousands of card games exist, including families of related games. A small number of card games played with traditional decks have standardized rules with international competitions being held, but most are folk games with rules that vary by culture, and region.

Traditional card games are played with a deck of playing cards which are identical in size and shape. Each card has two sides, the face and the back. Normally the backs of the cards are indistinguishable. The faces of the cards may all be unique, or there can be duplicates. The composition of a deck is known to each player.

Modern card games, such as Magic: The Gathering usually have bespoke decks, often with a vast amount of cards, and can include number or action cards. This type of card game is generally regarded as part of the board game hobby.

Games using playing cards utilize the fact that cards are individually identifiable from one side only, so that players only know the cards they hold, and not those held by others. Thus card games are categorized as games of chance or "imperfect information" — distinct from games of strategy or perfect information, where the current game state is fully visible to all players throughout the game.