The Game Corner

Playing Cards

I have a predelection for playing cards. Take a look at my collection if you have any doubts. I especially enjoy historic playing cards, and learning the rules to historic games (all historic games not just playing cards). A great website to start with is MacGregor Historic Games. Below are links to some card games that interest me. Some of these games can be played on my friend David's website .

• Court Piece An Iranian classic introduced to me by a coworker at IQC.
• Trix A middle eastern trick taking game with contracts.
• Schafkopf My favorite card game. A southern German trick taking game where more time is spent learning the rules than actually playing the game.
• Hearts my second favorite card game.
• Laugh and Ly Downe One of the earliest known "fishing" card games. Works best with 5 people though anteing can be adjust to 4 or 6 players.
• Triomphe Forcée An easy to learn 16th century card game for Tarot decks.
• Speed poker A game of my own invention. Fast paced and wraps up quick. The larger the group the better.
• Samarkis An original trick taking game invented by David Stang. The rules have been crafted in such a way that it is very difficult to known with any degree of certainty who has won a trick before all cards have been played. The many twists and turns the game can take gives rise to its name, which is derived from the city Samarkand, hichw lies between a pair of tortuous rivers and is itself a seemingly chaotic web of tributaries.
• Turntables An outlandish card game invinted by a friend and myself.

Juggling

Juggling is a hobby I'm particularly fond of. It can be quite the exercise session to spend an hour practicing a 5-ball cascade, 4-club fountain, or generally anything new that will require lots of bending over to pick up fallen props. A cool juggling simulator to check out is Juggling Lab, and if you're into passing, the Passing Pattern Compendium is a must-read. Below are my current numbers records:

• 7-balls: flashed
• 6-balls: qualified
• 5-balls: 164 catches
• 5-clubs: flashed
• 4-clubs: qualified
• 6-club, 4-hand ultimates: qualified

Conway's Game of Life

Conway's game of life is an interesting little game of "cellular automotons". It's a single player game that is entirely determined by its initial conditions. You can read more about its rules and history on its Wikipedia page.
Try giving the game a shot here, and after some experimentation, try some of the patterns in this list compiled by Alan Hensel: http://www.radicaleye.com/lifepage/picgloss/picgloss.html