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--Games
unique
to this site!-
Skarney-- John Scarne’s scoring rummy
Skarney Gin-- Scarne’s gin rummy
Sequence Gin-- gin rummy variant
The Big Game-- 42 with 11 tricks
42 variations-- we’ve got them all
Yukon-- unique trick-taking game from the 1898 gold rush.
Quinto-- unusual fun game from 1900
Marjolet-- one-deck Bezique from France
Jo-Jotte-- complex Bridge-like game for two
Domino Euchre-- Euchre with dominoes
Call-Ace Domino Euchre-- variant
Iceberg-- unique scoring rummy
Arlington Hts-- our own invention
Fortune Rummy-- lost since the 1940s
Teeko-- “lost” board game
Ringo - unusual board game
--42 family
Dominoes--
42 -- the parent game
The Big Game -- 42 with 11 tricks instead of 7
42 Variations -- including 80, 88, 84, 79, Nello, Plunge, and Sevens
Moon -- 3 player relative to 42
Partnership Moon -- 4 player Moon
---Cuban
Games---
Cubilete -- Great Cuban dice game
Domino Cubano --
Dominoes, Cuban-
style
---Dice
Games--
Farkle-- Among the best dice games, it dates back hundreds of years
Cubilete -- Great Cuban dice game
More dice games
--Games by
John Scarne-
Skarney Gin-- Takes Gin Rummy to a whole new level
Skarney-- The most sophisticated scoring rummy.
Scarney Dice games
Teeko-- board game
Scarne’s Bio
---Download
FREE game
books!---
A to Z of Dice Games -- rules for many great dice games (55 pages)
American Hoyle by Trumps 1894 (540 pages)
Foster’s Hoyle 1897 (625 pages)
Pirate Bridge -- great 3-person Bridge variant from 1917 (190 pages)
Conquian -- ancestor to modern rummy 1913 (90 pages)
---Scoring
Rummies---
500 Rummy
500 Partnership
Persian Rummy
Fortune Rummy
Arlington
Arlington Hghts
Skarney
---Gins---
Oklahoma Gin
Sequence Gin
Skarney Gin
--Bezique
Family--
Marjolet -- 2 players with 32 cards
Bezique -- 64 cards
Polish Bezique -- 64 card variant
Rubicon Bezique -- 128 cards
Chinese Bezique --
192 cards for Bezique-mania!
Zetema -- a long lost related game
BBC rules for all
forms of Bezique
--Rare Card
Games--
Bridgette -- Best two-handed Bridge variant. Compare it to Jo-Jotte
Bid Whist -- Unique whist variant popular among African Americans.
Eleusis Express -- famous unique inductive logic game.
--Historic
Card
Games--
Historic British Card Games-- rules for 12 once-popular games no longer played.
Medieval and Renaissance card and dice games.
--Fascinating
Profiles---
Ely Culbertson--
He made Contract Bridge famous.
Al Sobel on the invention of Jo-Jotte
John Scarne--
Houdini’s friend, card magician, author, games inventor.
The rather odd and interesting story of the United States Playing Card company.
Joseph Wergin--
Skat should have been it, not Contract Bridge!
R.F. Foster--
Biggest game book author from the 1880s to the 1930s
Stewart Culin--
Invented the modern science of ethnography - based on games!
-- Original
card,
dice &
domino
games--
Parlett’s games
Pips web site
Pagat web site
--Hundreds
more
games!--
The Card Games Web Site
Domino Game Rules
A - Z of Dice Games
BoardGameGeek - all board games
---Computer
Games--
Products to which we have no commercial ties but recommend:
Ringo (free)
Teeko (free)
Curtis Cameron offers fine 42 and Moon programs.
Cardmaster offers 25 games including Zetema, Bezique, Klabberjass, and Bid Whist.
Here’s Bid Whist online or on your PC.
--Domino
Games--
Domino Euchre--the card game played with dominoes!
Call-Ace Euchre-- domino Euchre variant
42 -- the parent game
The Big Game -- 42 with 11 tricks instead of 7
42 Variations -- including 80, 88, 84, 79, Nello, Plunge, and Sevens
Moon -- 3 player relative to 42
Partnership Moon -- 4 player Moon
---Favorite
Sites---
The Card Games site has the most card games rules anywhere
Playing Cards site has playing card history and pictorial examples.
House of Cards has a nice mix of rules, PC games, handheld games, and books.
Kadon Enterprises sells beautiful quality board games
Find hundreds of chess variants here
The Life of Games is an online games magazine
DominoLinks site links to many domino sites
David Parlett invents great card & board games!
BoardGameGeek covers all board games
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--- Board Games --- also see our Teeko page
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Ringo is a really fun two-player board game -- a bit like checkers in the round. What makes it especially interesting is that the two forces are unequal. One player defends the castle with four playing pieces, while the other tries to capture it with seven.
The game dates from the late eighteenth or early nineteenth century in Germany.
The Ringo Board --
This graphic shows how the Ringo playing board appears --
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Make your own Ringo game!
Click here.
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This graphic shows the Ringo board as it appears at the start of the game. The Defender has four playing pieces arrayed around the Castle he defends, while the Attacker has seven. With Defender as Red and Attacker as Green, pieces are positioned as shown to start the game --
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The blue region is known as the neutral zone.
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How to Play Ringo --
The Attacker wins if he or she can get two pieces into the Castle. The Defender wins if he prevents this (one way to prevent it is to reduce the Attacker to a single playing piece.)
As in checkers (draughts), players alternate turns. Each player may move only 1 piece per turn. Only 1 piece can occupy any position, with the exception of the Castle. Up to two Attackers can occupy the Castle (thus winning the game), but no Defender may ever occupy the Castle. The Attacker always takes the first turn to start the game.
Attacking pieces can move one space towards the Castle, or one space sideways to an adjacent space in the same ring. Attacking pieces can not move backwards or outwards (to an outer ring). Defending pieces can move one space forward, backward, or sideways (to any adjacent position).
Pieces are captured as in checkers or draughts. You jump an opponent’s piece to an unoccupied position on the other side of it. As dictated by their movement capabilities, Attackers can jump over a piece in front of them, or to either side. Defenders can jump over a piece in front of them, behind them, or to either side. You can only jump a single opposing piece per turn. You can not jump your own pieces. Captures or jumps are never mandatory.
A Defender can jump an Attacker inside the Castle and capture it. However a Defender may never enter the Castle or land there in a jump move.
Special rules apply to the Neutral Zone. Opposing pieces there can not be captured, although they can be jumped. You can start or end a jump from the Neutral Zone -- you just can not capture any piece residing within the Neutral Zone.
Rules Variations --
When playing Ringo, alternate who is Defender and Attacker each game. Playing an even number of games thus evens the odds when playing a match.
Most people find the Attacker has a slight advantage. Use one of these rules variations to even this out:
* Attackers can not enter from the Neutral Zone
* Allow the Defender to pass a turn
* Give Attacker only 6 or 5 playing pieces
* Allow only 1 Attacker piece in the Neutral Zone at any time
Strategies --
This is a game of unequal forces and asymmetrical setup. The two players have different goals.
The Attacker can ONLY go forward -- there is no retreat for him -- since his pieces can not go "backwards," moving outwards from the ring's center. The Attacker should think carefully before each move because he is progressively committing his pieces. The only "withdrawal" for him is to move pieces sideways.
In contrast, the Defender can move his pieces in any of four directions. Though he has fewer markers, this gives him a distinct movement advantage on which he should try to capitalize. He can also jump enemy pieces in any of four directions. Sometimes a good move is to get behind an Attacker piece and jump him by moving towards the center of the ring. This both eliminates the enemy piece and quickly moves the Defender piece back towards a good defensive position. Another advantage is that when the Defender maneuvers behind an Attacking piece, the Defender can jump the Attacker but the Attacker can not jump the Defender.
The Defender also has a movement advantage in that he distributes his moves between four pieces, versus the Attacker's seven. The Defender has a smaller, more fluid army, whereas the Attacker's attention is diverted into managing a larger force. But take care not to lose a piece if you're the Defender! The imbalance of forces means that a one-for-one trade-off represents a loss for the Defender. Especially in the beginning of the game this is a loss from which it is difficult for Defender to recover.
Tafl Games --
Games of unequal strength, or in which the two players have different numbers of playing pieces, are sometimes referred to as Tafl games. There are a large number of such games having their origins back in the days of the Vikings and Germanic tribes in northern and central Europe.
While not common among English speakers today, Tafl games like Ringo offer interest not found in symmetric, orthogonal games. Here’s a beautiful wood creation of the game Hnefatafl that was popular in medieval Scandanavia. You can see how opposing forces are unequal and are not arranged symmetrically at the start of the game --
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Photo courtesy of Wikipedia
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Play Ringo on Your Computer --
Though few know of it, there is free downloadable Ringo game for Windows. It was developed with a dozen other games and puzzles by popular computer book author Michael J. Young for his book Visual Basic: Game Programming for Windows back in 1992. Download the games file from here, un-zip it into a folder, and double-click on the file named RG.EXE to play Ringo.
As the main menu below shows, other games included in the set are peg solitaire, the dice game Deduce, Word Squares, three-dimensional Tic-tac-toe, Queens, Grid War, Fractals, and TriPack. The set includes Ludo (a simplified version of Parcheesi), and Boule, the gambling wheel game popular in Europe. Here’s how a few of the games look --
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These games run on Windows XP and older Windows versions. They do not run under Vista, even if you set the program properties to “Windows XP compatibility mode.” If you try them on Windows 7, please email me at webmasterA@CardsAndDominoes.com to let me know if they run there, and I’ll post your findings.
I’ve also run the games under Linux using the Wine Windows compatibility package. Since the games run under Wine that means you can run them on Linux, Mac OS, BSD, and Solaris Unix.
Another Windows-based Ringo game is from Zillions of Games. The Ringo download is free -- but you must purchase their games engine to run it on.
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