Help - Card Game suggestions that use chips (but is NOT poker) (2 Viewers)

mattross1313

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Whilst my good wife understands the rules of poker there is no way we could play HU at home as the lack of strategy and bet sizes would end in arguments....plus she'd never pay up if I won :LOL: :laugh: /joke. We generally enjoy card games and play a lot at the bar when we used to away on holiday etc. I'm looking for suggestions / ideas for ways to get my poker chips into play for some 2-4 player card games that is not the typical NLHE / PLO.

There must be more generic card games out there perhaps not as focused on money, but more points based, where I can substitute chips and finally get some of the Nakatomi's into play. Not hosting a regular game for a few more months yet, so hoping this will tide me over until then.

One game that I'm reading up on is Open Face Chinese Poker, seems like chips can be used to track the points. I guess we could each start out with a rack of chips and go from there?
But I'm open to other suggestions.

@Poker Zombie - tagging you as I recall you hoard games outside of the poker world?
@MatB - I think I remember seeing a post from you about OFC in the cut card thread so may have some thoughts on this?

Thanks!
 
OFCP would work. Plus you can use all the. Denominations. Just give them all the same value 10 cents or $1 each. Whatever the stakes.
 
OFC is a fantastic game.
cribbage... a pound a game a schilling a point (or whatever you people are using as currency these days)
Monopoly
rummy
 
OFCP would work. Plus you can use all the. Denominations. Just give them all the same value 10 cents or $1 each. Whatever the stakes.
Thanks Mat. Do you tend to use a standard starting point for chips? If each point/chip was 10 cents, would you start with 100?
EDIT - also, do you play up to X rounds or until someone runs outta chips? (I'm still reading up on it all)
a pound a game a schilling a point (or whatever you people are using as currency these days)
schilling :ROFL: :ROFLMAO: you people :ROFL: :ROFLMAO: :ROFL: :ROFLMAO:
We've not long moved onto Pounds. Though they still use funny money up with @BonScot
 
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Any card game that uses points works with chips. Gin, rummy, cribbage (though have a nice cribbage board I would stick with that). Open Face Chinese (Pineapple) is one we frequently play as well.

If you use play money or a pencil and paper to track points/scores you should be using chips.
 
Thanks all!
If you were playing standard OFC....not with jokers, or progressive and such (highly recommended to start).
So just to make sure I'm reading that right, we are best to not use jokers or progressives for now, just stick to the regular versions?
Open Face Chinese (Pineapple) is one we frequently play as well.
I found an app that allows me to play both versions, Pineapple is definitely a little easier to work with and I get less fouls :D
Play sequence!
This is a new one on me! Looks fun too, thanks!
 
Thanks all!

So just to make sure I'm reading that right, we are best to not use jokers or progressives for now, just stick to the regular versions?

Yes.

OFC regular- you get in fantasy land with QQ+ on top board. Fantasy gets you 14 cards
OFC progressive- Same as above, except you get 14 cards with QQ, 15 for KK and 16 for AA+. If you qualify to stay in fantasy for the next hand, you get 14 cards.
OFC ultimate- Same as progressive, but however many cards you get in fantasy with, that's what you get next hand if you qualify to stay in fantasy.

In OFC regular, you probably will qualify to stay in fantasy 1 time in 5. In OFC Ultimate with jokers, it is very easy to stay in fantasy for 6+ hands. It gets ridiculous.
 
Whilst my good wife understands the rules of poker there is no way we could play HU at home as the lack of strategy and bet sizes would end in arguments....plus she'd never pay up if I won :LOL: :laugh: /joke. We generally enjoy card games and play a lot at the bar when we used to away on holiday etc. I'm looking for suggestions / ideas for ways to get my poker chips into play for some 2-4 player card games that is not the typical NLHE / PLO.

There must be more generic card games out there perhaps not as focused on money, but more points based, where I can substitute chips and finally get some of the Nakatomi's into play. Not hosting a regular game for a few more months yet, so hoping this will tide me over until then.

One game that I'm reading up on is Open Face Chinese Poker, seems like chips can be used to track the points. I guess we could each start out with a rack of chips and go from there?
But I'm open to other suggestions.

@Poker Zombie - tagging you as I recall you hoard games outside of the poker world?
@MatB - I think I remember seeing a post from you about OFC in the cut card thread so may have some thoughts on this?

Thanks!

Gin Rummy and Cribbage are exquisite two-player card games. Cribbage traditionally uses a cribbage board to keep score but it would be well-suited to using poker chips instead - dump two and a half racks of your favorite chip in the middle of the table and every time you would normally score a point take a chip.

Gin Rummy is a gambling game. Usually points are tallied on paper, and at the end of a series of hands the points are totaled and the winner pays the loser $X per point. You could use poker chips to "pay" each other after a series of hands; you probably wouldn't want to use poker chips to tally the points as you go since there's various bonuses that get paid at the end of the series of hands, and paper is the best way to keep track of that.

Piquet is an old and obscure two-player card game; it's a little complicated and fiddly (although so is Cribbage) but it's actually very good. Like with Gin Rummy, you could settle payments at the end of the game using chips, but it's probably best to track scores during the game on paper. Then again, either Gin or Piquet might work well using chips to keep score the same way as I suggested above for Cribbage. [ @Poker Zombie is of this opinion, it seems ]

Put is a very old gambling game for two players; I've modified it to accommodate anywhere from two to ten players, so I'll provide my modified rules here. It's a precursor to poker, and it incorporates money the same way that poker does - players start with an initial wager, but can raise the stakes, forcing other players to either risk more money or abandon the pot. This version of Put would use poker chips in the same way that poker does.

Put
Not Poker. A small and simple trick-taking game with unusual betting.

All players ante. For two to six players, deal each player one more card than there are players. Deal seven cards for seven, six cards for eight, and five cards with nine or ten.

The player to the dealer’s left leads to the first trick.

Suits don’t matter. The highest card played takes the trick and leads to the next trick. Ties are set aside; the same player leads again.

Before playing a card (whether leading or following), a player may bet. All other players must call the bet or fold (no further bets or raises). The player then plays their card.

The player still in who has won the most tricks, or who is the last left in, takes the pot. Tied players split the pot.

If no one bets before the start of the second trick, the winner of the first trick must bet before leading. If the first trick was a tie, the player to the dealer’s left must bet and then lead to the second trick.

The game ends once one player has won enough tricks to guarantee having more tricks than any other player; the remaining tricks are not played out.
If playing no-limit, betting cannot exceed the table stakes of the least-staked player still in the hand; there can be no side pots.

Using a mechanism like Put, any game can be turned into a poker-like game. This type of gambling is called "vying", and poker is the quintessential vying game. But you can introduce a similar element into any game and thus find a good use for your poker chips. For example, Backgammon has the doubling cube, and while it doesn't normally use poker chips to settle wagers, it could. Some games have structures that would work better for this sort of wagering-and-stake-raising than others. In perfect information games like Chess this would just lead to bullying; in partially-random games like Backgammon it introduces a gambling aspect, and in hidden information games like Put it allows for bluffing.

Seven - Twenty-Seven is a game that's a bit like Blackjack, but it has betting rounds between each round of dealing additional cards, so there's strategy involved beyond just the mechanical formulas used in Blackjack, and since there's multiple betting rounds you can get all of your various chips in play if you play No Limit or Pot Limit.

There's a lot of other good two-player card games, but I can't offhand think of any others that are good and have a natural use for poker chips. For example, you can adapt nearly any sort of whist-like trick-taking game into an interesting two-player game in several different ways but in every case each hand is simply win-or-lose, or possibly win-or-lose-a-few-points. Those could be translated into wagers (and, in fact, traditionally they often are) but you're talking about small numbers of chips changing hands, even over time. Poker chips work well for poker because, for example, in NLHE you start with making bets in small units (1 or a few BB) but end up accumulating large numbers of them in short order (going all-in for hundreds of BB). You just don't see that sort of dynamic in most traditional card games.
 

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