Card Games - Random Trivia Answers

• A1) Whist. The main difference between the games is the addition of bidding in bridge, a feature that has been added to some newer variations of whist.
• A2) 7,600. Losing every trick in a redoubled grand slam gives the opponents 400 points for the first trick and 600 for each of the other twelve. By contrast, making that same contract is worth only 2,980 points in no trump, 2,940 in a major, and 2,660 in a minor. Add 150 points to all of these for the absolute maximums with honors.
• A3) Canasta. The game uses two full decks with jokers, and all of the 2's and jokers are wild for a total of 12 wild cards.
• A4) Baccarat. The highest total in the game is 9.
• A5) The Four of spades and Four of diamonds (4S 4D). This gives you four-of-a-kind, topping the potential full houses, flushes, and straights out there.
• A6) Surrender. This option is sometimes available on all hands and sometimes only if your hand has a certain total. There are also early and late surrender variations against a dealer's ace. Fewer casinos now allow surrender, partly because the added complication confuses casual bettors more than it attracts them.
• A7) 108. There are four 25-card colored suits (one 0; two of the other denominations from 1 to 9; and two Reverses, Skips, and Draw Twos), four Wild cards, and four Wild Draw Four cards.
• A8) Concentration. Contestants attempted to find matches in a six-by-five game board, which revealed a hidden rebus as the numbers were removed. NBC broadcast the original show from 1958 to 1979, with Ed McMahon as the host for a few months in 1969.
• A9) Euchre. With hearts as the trump suit, this is the highest possible hand. The Jack of the trump suit, the right bower, is the highest card. The Jack of the same color, the left bower, is the second highest card. And the remaining cards in the trump suit follow from Ace down to Two.
• A10) Big Two and Dai Hin Min. As the name implies, Big Two places the Two above the Ace. The seemingly unrelated Dai Hin Min does the same, although both were developed in Asia.
• A11) 15. If one player has no cards to Spit after creating the layout, there is only one pile in the middle. The standard layout has piles of one, two, three, four, and five cards, for a total of fifteen cards.
• A12) 30. If four 7's and four 6's are played in order, the second player scores two pairs (4 points), two four-of-a-kinds (24 points), and two Gos (2 points). I.e., 7-7-7-7 Go 6-6-6-6 Go (the second set can be 5's or 4's instead).

What's your favorite card game that I haven't mentioned? Please post your thoughts in the comments.