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Apparently no mention of the variant that, in my experience as a kid, was by far the most common: no bidding, 1 point to the winning team, or 2 if you win 10 bo

Apparently no mention of the variant that, in my experience as a kid, was by far the most common: no bidding, 1 point to the winning team, or 2 if you win 10 books. Commonly, you bet 5 or 10 as a team and won for being first to the amount bet. I played or watched probably thousands of games in middle and high school and I don't think I ever saw anyone play the formal way.

Avshalom 5y ago
Yeah and as a result my bidding is still for shit. I always chalked it up to half the class sharing/standing-around one deck so we had to keep swapping out who was playing any given hand.
sixstringtheory 5y ago
Never heard of that variant myself. Played constantly in high school, mostly during calculus and comp sci; wrote a game engine for it in C++ in that class. Like poker, it's less about the cards and more about the social aspects. Actual card strategy is just table stakes. Can you bluff the other team into bidding too low or high? Can you read how your teammate bids and close the round accordingly? I've won plenty of games by forcing the other team to sandbag. By leaving bidding out you are playing glorified war. I can see it for kids but it's not terribly interesting. The only variant we'd play was a three player game where we'd have to remove a few cards to make the deck size a multiple of 3. Called it cutthroat because it's everyone for themselves. But we'd only play that if we couldn't get a fourth.
- nobody9999 5y ago
  >The only variant we'd play was a three player game where we'd have to remove a few cards to make the deck size a multiple of 3. We always just removed the 2 of clubs. 51/3=17 cards each.
  - sixstringtheory 5y ago
    Yes, thanks :) It's been a while and I didn't do the math...
x86_64Ubuntu 5y ago
I've never heard of no-bidding. One of the nice things about bidding is that it allows you to infer information about the hands that are being held by the various people at the table. If you don't have any bidding, then you are playing a weird version of the card game War.

Avshalom 5y ago

Yeah and as a result my bidding is still for shit. I always chalked it up to half the class sharing/standing-around one deck so we had to keep swapping out who was playing any given hand.

sixstringtheory 5y ago

Never heard of that variant myself. Played constantly in high school, mostly during calculus and comp sci; wrote a game engine for it in C++ in that class. Like poker, it's less about the cards and more about the social aspects. Actual card strategy is just table stakes. Can you bluff the other team into bidding too low or high? Can you read how your teammate bids and close the round accordingly? I've won plenty of games by forcing the other team to sandbag. By leaving bidding out you are playing glorified war. I can see it for kids but it's not terribly interesting. The only variant we'd play was a three player game where we'd have to remove a few cards to make the deck size a multiple of 3. Called it cutthroat because it's everyone for themselves. But we'd only play that if we couldn't get a fourth.

nobody9999 5y ago
>The only variant we'd play was a three player game where we'd have to remove a few cards to make the deck size a multiple of 3. We always just removed the 2 of clubs. 51/3=17 cards each.
- sixstringtheory 5y ago
  Yes, thanks :) It's been a while and I didn't do the math...

x86_64Ubuntu 5y ago

I've never heard of no-bidding. One of the nice things about bidding is that it allows you to infer information about the hands that are being held by the various people at the table. If you don't have any bidding, then you are playing a weird version of the card game War.