4 Playing Card Games You Can Enjoy With Your Family During Quarantine

The COVID-19 pandemic has pushed all of us to stay at home for months. Strict lockdowns, sanitization, and social distancing are the only effective ways to keep the virus at bay. The best way to use this time well is to embrace this change and utilize it to bond with your family.

Young family playing card game at home

Traditional card games are an excellent way to bond with your family. They’re fun, exciting, and don’t require any fancy gadgets or settings. All you need is a pack of the best playing cards that you can use for playing multiple times.

Below are a few popular card games that you can enjoy with your family during quarantine.

1.Go Fish 

Go Fish is a popular game with children. Two to six players can play this game together. To win the game, you have to collect the most books. Books are sets of four cards that have the same rank, e.g. all four cards have to be queens or aces, or any other ranks that are the same.

To start the game, the players are dealt cards. The player who starts the game will ask any other player if they have a card the player needs or asks them for a rank. If others have that rank, they should give all of it to the player asking. This is called stealing in the game. If you steal, you can continue asking for ranks. If the player you asked doesn’t have the cards you need, they will say, “go fish”; this means you have to go to the “fishing pond”, which is the deck of cards in the middle, and pick a card. Once you have four cards of the same rank, you can make a book and put it aside. The player with the most books wins the game.

2.Hearts  

Hearts is an old, classic card game dating back to the 17th century. The game can be played with three or four players. To start the game, the deck is equally divided amongst players and the players pass three cards from their set to another player. The other player must accept the three cards. The game begins as the starting player plays one card. All other players have to follow the suit of the lead card and play a similar suit. If they don’t have the same suit, they can play any card they want to discard. The player who has played the highest card of that suit will take all the cards. This is called a trick.

The heart suit plays a crucial role in this game as they are considered as points. A heart card in a trick is considered as a point. Since the aim of the game is to have minimum points, getting a heart card in a trick can add up to your points and make you lose the game. It’s even worse to get the queen of spades, the only non-heart card with points, that counts for thirteen points!

3.Texas Hold‘Em Poker 

Texas Hold’Em is the most popular version of poker around the world. Two to four players can play this game. Each player is dealt two cards, called the hole cards. The aim of the game is to match your cards with the board cards to make the strongest combination. As the board cards are revealed, the bets are raised. There are five board cards revealed and the player that makes the strongest combination with these five cards wins the round.

Closeup, people playing card game

4.Nerts

Nerts is a game for two or more players. Here, each player has their own deck of cards. The objective of the game is to finish up all the cards from their nerts pile by adding them to the common foundation of cards laid in the middle. The game is played simultaneously as players compete with each other to finish up their pile of cards first. To get rid of their nerts pile, the players either play on the foundation cards or on their own tableau in their areas. The player who finishes his pile first can call out nerts and the game finishes.

Conclusion 

Traditional card games have been played for centuries and are considered as a perfect way to release stress, bond with your family, and, most importantly, have fun. From simple yet fun games like Go Fish that’s sure to get the children excited to a fun betting game like Texas Hold’Em that can keep you on the edge of your seat for hours, there are several card games that can add excitement to your monotonous quarantine days. To start with, all you really need is a beautiful pack of cards!