What are some card games that you can play as teams, not including bridge.?

Question

What are some card games that you can play as teams, not including bridge.?

Answer 1

OK, you might need an open mind for this one. Did you know that tarot cards were invented for playing card games? These days most of the games are played with French suited cards that you wouldn't recognize as being tarot - but, tarot they are and the old Italian trumps are still used for games in Italy, Sicily, and Switzerland.

They were created in the 15th century, commissioned as part of the celebrations for the marriage of Bianca Visconti into the Sforza family in Milan. The extra suit of cards took as its theme, a traditional Christian triumph procession of the time - possibly that which was held to celebrate Bianca's birth in 1425. Hence these cards were called trionfi, meaning triumphs, and from which we get our word trump - it was tarot that marked the invention of trumps in card games! For three hundred and fifty years the cards were used only for games.

Anyhow, these are all point-trick games. So, like bridge or spades, you take cards in tricks. However, unlike them, different cards have different point values and so it is not the number of tricks you win but the number of card points in them that matter. The games range in complexity from the very simple to the highly sophisticated that can easily give bridge a run for its money while being a whole lot easier to learn!

Many of these games are played in partnerships and these fall into two groups. There are those that are, like bridge and spades, played in fixed partnerships. Then there are those that are played in partnerships decided by either the bidding round or by calling for a particular card holder to be partner.

Of the first group, the easiest is the four handed tarocchi, a Piedmontese game that is much like a point-trick version of whist - but a good starting point for those new to this type of play. The Swiss have a version of the game called Troccas with an unusual feature of a 'conversation' for revealing information about your hand - it can also be played by three teams of two.

However, it is Ottocento that is the king of all card games. This is played with an unusual pack unique to Bologna (though easily available through the internet). Like the name suggests, it is played in rubbers of 800 points - first team past the post wins the game (and a fixed stake, if that's your thing). The feature that sets this apart from other tarot games is that you also score points for having certain combinations and sequences. These can be scored from your hand before play commences, in individual tricks as they are played, and from your trick pile at the end. It is a feature that makes this surprisingly sophisticated in play - while very easy to learn!

Those games that involved bidding or calling for a partner are numerous - those that stand out are the Hungarian Tarokky, The French five player game, and one of the Sicilian games.

You can find Anglicised rules for 25 games here:

http://www.tarocchino.com

And you can find rules with the original language terms here:

http://www.pagat.com

If you would like to know more about their history, I would suggest:

http://www.trionfi.com

http://a_pollett.tripod.com/

Answer 2

Pinochle !

Answer 3

Spades is the ultimate team card game.

Another would be Cribbage.  It can be played:

one on one

two on two

one on one on one

two on two on two.