On the Cards Trivia Quiz

Answer: Poker

Poker is extremely well known for its many slang terms for cards and hands, and both the full boat and steel wheel are extremely rare and desirable hands.

A full boat refers to the full house hand of a pair and a three-of-a-kind and may be a reference to the riverboat, a venue that used to be popular for gambling. The steel wheel is another term for a straight flush with five as a high card and is the lowest straight flush that beats a four-of-a-kind.

Answer: Solitaire

Solitaire, also known as patience, has a wide array of variant rules and styles but is usually played alone as its French-derived name suggests.

Traditionally, two decks are used in spider solitaire, laid out in piles of five or six with the aim being to stack each suit in stacks of thirteen. The scorpion variant is fairly similar. It uses one deck where the deck is laid out in seven sets of seven with three leftover cards set aside for when no moves are possible, with the aim being to stack suit sequences from king to ace. The key difference here is that any face up card can be used; a five beneath an ace and king can be placed on a six.

Answer: Hearts

According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, the term 'shooting the moon' dates to 1823 refering to 'departing by night with ones goods to escape back rent'. It more likely derives from shooting *for* the moon - trying for a difficult or improbable outcome - as it can be rather difficult to obtain every heart as well as the queen of spades. As Hearts is played to 100, lowest scorer winning, the ability to dump 26 points on every other player when shooting the moon is a high-risk, high-reward strategy.

If it were my luck, I'd instead be shooting the foot, where I get the queen of spades and all but one heart awarding myself 25 points.

Answer: Magic: The Gathering

'Magic: The Gathering' made its debut as the first trading card game back in 1993, and was still going strong in the early 21st century as creators Wizards of the Coast had claimed to have printed 20 million cards in 2018. It combined the collectible nature of baseball cards with the fantasy elements of role-playing games to create an addictive - and costly - challenging game with world renown.

Far from being romantic gifts, the Mox Sapphire and Black Lotus were considered among the top ten rarest cards in 2016. The Mox Sapphire added one blue mana to the mana pool with the Black Lotus adding three mana to a chosen mana pool before being discarded. Whilst in 2016 the rarest, "Alpha" printing of the Mox Sapphire in mint condition could fetch around $5,000, the Black Lotus comparably could net at least $20,000.

Answer: Cards Against Humanity

With the tagline of 'a party game for horrible people', this student-created game raised $15,000 on Kickstarter and was the top selling card game on Amazon the month after it came out with the object being to 'have fun'. Unconventionally, the game was downloadable from their website for free and could be used, remixed or shared for free according to a creative commons license, though the creators noted: "Please do not steal our name or we will smash you.". In 2015, a special Black Friday promotion took place where people could spend $5 for nothing, as that was the greatest gift of all. 11,248 customers took them up on that generous offer.

Oh, right, the risqué and politically incorrect humour? Feel free to look into it yourself, but edgy themes of racism, homophobia and other such content abound.

Answer: Cheat

Cheat, also known as bluff or 'I Doubt It', is typically played with between two and six players. A player selects a card, lays it face down on the table, and declares its rank (e.g. jack) and the next player then adds the next rank up, and so on. A challenge can be made if someone feels deception is afoot, and if the player is correct in their assertion, the top card is revealed and the liar must take the whole hand.

Answer: Bridge

Contract bridge has a wide association as being one of the most complex card games, and as such is equipped with a wide array of specific terms. World-famous investor Warren Buffett once said: "Bridge is such a sensational game that I wouldn't mind being in jail if I had three cellmates who were decent players and who were willing to keep the game going 24 hours a day.".

In an auction, the partnerships make bids to play in a contract, which can be difficult to gauge as the partnerships are only allowed to exchange a limited amount of information with one another through their bids with the opponents also being privy to this information. A grand slam is a successful seven-level contract to win all thirteen tricks, where a trick winner is simply the player with the highest card in the strongest suit of the four cards played that round.

Answer: Blackjack

Blackjack derives from the French for vingt-et-un (21) and the original gambling institutes offered special promotional odds of 10:1 for having a black jack, which were eventually retracted as the game grew in popularity, hence the name.

Appropriately, any value over 21 is considered a bust. In that case, the dealer wins and takes the cash. The player can choose to double down by matching their original bet and drawing exactly one card more, if they've only drawn one or two cards to that point.

Also, bonus trivial fact: In 2001, Stephen de Raffaele lasted 51 hours and 33 minutes dealing in a single session at the Oracle Casino in Malta. According to the Times of Malta's website, getting the Guinness World Records to establish the rules for this then untried challenge had been harder for him than actually pulling this extreme feat off.

Answer: War

War is typically played by two people and, due to its simplicity, is often considered a children's game. Each player gets 26 cards each and simply turns up the top card of their deck, with the highest card winning the battle. If the ranks happen to be equal, a war is declared, with players placing an additional face down card and face up card.

The highest face up card claims all six of these cards, and the winner of the game is the one who has claimed all cards by the end of the game - it can take quite a while to resolve some games. War is an appropriate name in that light.

Answer: no

'The Game of Life' took the player through different stages of life including studenthood and marriage, but it was a board game rather than a card game.

However! That doesn't mean a card game of 'Life' hasn't been tried - for example in 2014 Hasbro released the derivative 'The Game of Life Adventures' where players had family, career, adventure and wealth cards with the aim being to score the highest combination of life events. The game was fairly uncompetitive, with the aim really being to enjoy fanciful fantasies of skydiving, PhDs and large families.