how to ruin card games, part 0: my personal background

i taught a class on this so i might as well type up some notes and save them for later

o there are a lot of card games. some of which some people like more than others.

this includes me. there are card games that i like and card games that i don't like.

however, i honestly don't play card games a ton anymore, i prefer to spend my time playing spirit island. so a bit of background on myself:

i've been playing card games for a long time now. i don't even remember how i started, but pretty early on, i learned about several card games from clubhouse games on the nintendo ds, such as rummy, crazy eights, and bridge.

my next exposure to card games, around middle school, was extended family. we played a lot of games where twos are higher than aces, which included games like tractor, zheng shang you (a game pretty similar to president) and dou di zhu (screw with the landlord).

finally, in high school, i would actually start having friends, a large swath of which was through math competitions. and some of them liked card games. this was where i played a lot of canadian fish/literature, coup, and also how i learned several really good board games, like seven wonders and stone age. in senior year, i was introduced to riichi mahjong, which was an obsession that lasted for a year.

finally, i was introduced to spirit island in freshman spring of college, and from there it took over my life, so i didn't really feel a need to learn more card games. i did still learn at least one card game, a coop trick-taking game called the crew.

now, i still have pretty strong preferences about card games, even though i haven't played many of them in a while. i guess this period of not playing should make all my opinions of these card games better than back when i was more involved in them and i was actually competitive most of the time.

let's start with the ones i remember really liking:

• gin rummy
• seven bridge
• continental bridge
• tractor
• finding friends

there are some games i have generally positive opinions towards but not as strongly as the ones above:

• hearts
• spades
• wizard and jester
• president
• kent
• 99
• crazy eights
• coup
• uno
• uno oops all wilds

as you can tell, i generally like trick-taking games.
there are games i'm generally neutral about:

• bs
• canadian fish
• speed
• hanabi
• dominion

finally, there are games i'm generally negative about:

• mao
• ers
• poker
• texas hold'em

and there are also games that i've just never played before.

• cribbage
• nerts
• euchre (i might have played this one actually but i don't remember it at all)
• tichu

out of all of these, ers and mao are the two i actively dislike. mao, if played badly, is basically hazing, while ers is too physical, and it involves card counting. these two are the ones i have the best designed ruining strategies and will be focusing on in the future parts.
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