COMMUNITY
Keeping Score
Gather Around the Table... For family card games!
While there are, without a doubt, so many things to look forward to this time of year, the most meaningful of them all is getting to spend time with friends and family. This year should remind us that it’s more than ever how important it is to savor that quality time. So, after you finish you finish up your holiday meal, grab your loved ones and a deck cards to try some of these family-fun card games! Happy holidays!
POKER To play poker, you’ll need a standard deck of cards (minus the jokers), at least two players and poker chips or a substitution. Each player is dealt five cards and assess the strength of their hand. Based on their confidence in their hand, they will then wager a certain amount of chips. The player that bets the most chips wins unless another player is willing to match their bet. If two bets are equal, both players will show their cards and whoever has the best hand wins all the chips. CRAZY EIGHTS The objective of crazy eights is to be the first player to get rid of all of the cards in your hand. Each player is dealt five cards, one at a time face down. Place the remaining cards in the middle of the table and have the dealer pick up the top card, laying it face down in a separate stack. After that, each player, starting with the one on the dealer’s left, must place one card on the starter pile. Each card, except eights, must match the card at the top of the pile in either suit or number. If the player is unable to match the card, they must draw from the stockpile until they draw one that does. Eights may be played at any time in any turn. The first player to discard all of their hand wins that round. The winner then collects from each player the
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value of the cards remaining as “points.” Whoever has the most points by the last round wins!
SOLITAIRE Solitaire starts by dealing the seven main piles, known as tableau. Starting on the left, place the first card face up and the remaining six face down and to your right. For the next deal, place one card face up on the second pile and one card face down on piles three through seven. For the third deal, place one card face up on pile three and one card each face down on piles four through seven. Repeat this deal pattern until the last pile (pile seven) has one card facing up on top and six cards facing down. Use the remaining cards to build the stockpile to the side. Your first objective will be to build of the foundation of each stack so that they are in sequence and suit by transferring cards from the stock to the piles. To win the game however, you must build the whole pack into the tableau. Although solitaire is only meant for one player, you can make this a family game by giving each player their own set of cards and see who can win their round first! SLAPJACK If you’re looking for something fun and fast, slapjack is it! To get started, the dealer will deal out the entire deck of cards face down, one card at a time to each player in a clockwise rotation. After each player has a pile of face down cards, the player to the left of the dealer plays a card face up in the center of the table. Every player will take a turn doing this until someone plays a jack. Whichever player slaps the jack first wins all the cards in the middle of table and gets to add them to their pile. The new pile will start with the player to the winner’s left. RUMMY The whole game of rummy revolves around trying to
