[HN Gopher] How you play Spades is how you play life
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How you play Spades is how you play life
Author : feross
Score : 87 points
Date : 2021-08-30 17:32 UTC (5 hours ago)
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(TXT) w3m dump (pudding.cool)
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| Spades has long been the standard card game in the US military,
| which is at least partly responsible for its widespread
| propagation. That is where I learned it, and most other people I
| know either learned it in the military or from someone that was
| in the military.
|
| That said, I never played it that much outside the military.
| These days everyone seems to play poker.
| [deleted]
| KentGeek wrote:
| I learned Spades in the USNavy, and didn't realize that it was
| intimately associated with African-American culture at all. I
| preferred Spades, but the most popular card game (at that time,
| in that setting) was Euchre.
| jandrewrogers wrote:
| I was not aware of the association with African-American
| culture either. I always associated it with spending time in
| the military. My grandfathers knew how to play from their
| service in WW2.
| bifurcations wrote:
| I had no idea about this cultural history. A bunch of us in high
| school comp sci used to play the online version bundled with
| Windows XP once we were done with our assignments...we'd try to
| queue up at the same time to get matched in the same game.
| cool_dude85 wrote:
| Apparently no mention of the variant that, in my experience as a
| kid, was by far the most common: no bidding, 1 point to the
| winning team, or 2 if you win 10 books. Commonly, you bet 5 or 10
| as a team and won for being first to the amount bet.
|
| I played or watched probably thousands of games in middle and
| high school and I don't think I ever saw anyone play the formal
| way.
| Avshalom wrote:
| Yeah and as a result my bidding is still for shit. I always
| chalked it up to half the class sharing/standing-around one
| deck so we had to keep swapping out who was playing any given
| hand.
| sixstringtheory wrote:
| Never heard of that variant myself. Played constantly in high
| school, mostly during calculus and comp sci; wrote a game
| engine for it in C++ in that class.
|
| Like poker, it's less about the cards and more about the social
| aspects. Actual card strategy is just table stakes. Can you
| bluff the other team into bidding too low or high? Can you read
| how your teammate bids and close the round accordingly? I've
| won plenty of games by forcing the other team to sandbag.
|
| By leaving bidding out you are playing glorified war. I can see
| it for kids but it's not terribly interesting.
|
| The only variant we'd play was a three player game where we'd
| have to remove a few cards to make the deck size a multiple of
| 3. Called it cutthroat because it's everyone for themselves.
| But we'd only play that if we couldn't get a fourth.
| nobody9999 wrote:
| >The only variant we'd play was a three player game where
| we'd have to remove a few cards to make the deck size a
| multiple of 3.
|
| We always just removed the 2 of clubs. 51/3=17 cards each.
| sixstringtheory wrote:
| Yes, thanks :) It's been a while and I didn't do the
| math...
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Fantastic presentation and very cool project. Would have liked a
| 'what is Spades?' card for people who are not familiar with the
| game and might miss out on all the good stuff due to
| disorientation.
| ALittleLight wrote:
| There was a line in there that reminded me a bit of a thing you
| might write in a school essay - "When playing Spades, you're
| dealt a hand and have no control over the cards you get--unless
| you're cheating." I'm having trouble thinking of a card game
| where you do get control over the cards you're dealt. Maybe there
| is one?
|
| I'm reminded of a time in high school where for some reason I had
| to write an essay connecting Mary Shelley's Frankenstein to some
| more modern environmentalism ideas. These "You don't control the
| hand you're dealt" are exactly the kind of thing that filled
| those essays in school. "The monster, representing the unchecked
| progress of technology, causes great harm to the world..." You
| can just draw random connections between any two ideas if you
| don't limit yourself to strong, unique, or meaningful
| connections.
| majormajor wrote:
| Many forms of poker let you exchange some number of cards, or
| do a "pick N out of M from this pool" type of thing.
|
| Hearts lets you shuffle cards around (the usual style I've seen
| is first pass right, then pass left, then pass across, then
| hold).
| scubbo wrote:
| Blackjack (and, arguably, Go Fish) - and, as another commenter
| has pointed out, non-"standard-52" games like Magic The
| Gathering, Yu-Gi-Oh, Netrunner, Legend Of The Five Rings, etc.
| spullara wrote:
| In games like Magic: The Gathering you do get to decide what
| possible cards you can be dealt.
| dagw wrote:
| And richer players have access better to cards that poorer
| payers can never hope to be dealt.
| qsort wrote:
| You do have a point, but this trope is overstated in a way
| that doesn't reflect reality IMO.
|
| At a competitive level the playing field is completely
| level. You have to assume players have access to all the
| cards, otherwise games like it make zero sense.
|
| Sure, it's an expensive game, but so are many other games
| and sports. It's an accessibility issue, not a balance
| issue: it's not like you can buy your way to victory.
|
| Plus, you can always play sealed and draft, if you really
| hate constructed formats!
| dharmab wrote:
| Another genre is "deckbuilding" where all the cards are in
| a shared pool and you construct a deck during the gameplay
| by various means.
| cool_dude85 wrote:
| Funny enough, one counter example is another card game that's
| largely seen as part of African-American culture, bid whist. In
| that game, there's a small pile of cards dealt separately as a
| kitty, which the winning bidder gets to incorporate into his
| hand after the bid is done.
| Zircom wrote:
| In spades all 52 cards are dealt out 13 to each player, so
| there's absolutely no way* to change anything in your hand.
| There's no deck or discard pile to draw from, unlike other card
| games were you can draw or otherwise pick cards up others have
| discarded/played, or some games even allow you to play cards
| off other cards already on the table.
|
| *in some variants you can trade 2 cards with your partner if
| you are taking a nil
| wyager wrote:
| Isn't Texas hold em poker, I would guess the most popular
| card game, the same way?
| vikingerik wrote:
| No, but I understand what you're getting at about
| controlling your hand. You get two private cards and five
| community cards. You can pick any five of the seven to use
| at the showdown.
|
| It feels like you get choice with the five-of-seven, but
| that's an illusion. There's always one strictly superior
| set (or trivial equivalencies), and that will be
| automatically chosen in any serious context ("cards
| speak".)
|
| _Draw_ poker and some other variations do give you some
| control, by letting you discard some cards to get them
| replaced.
| __s wrote:
| No, you're dealt 2 cards, not 13. You eventually draw 5 to
| 3 cards from the community cards
| watwut wrote:
| There are games where you build your deck either before game or
| during game. Then you have control over what card comes at
| which probabilities.
| riversflow wrote:
| I'm gonna chime in here and say that in Cribbage you only
| "play" 4 of the 6 cards you're dealt, the two discarded cards
| from each player become the crib which is counted for points,
| but not played.
| Huwyt_Nashi_065 wrote:
| I have a hunch this black author isn't fond of White people...
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| I've never heard of spades until this article. I've played hearts
| (and always forget how), but not spades.
|
| Is this a UK thing?
| jasonladuke0311 wrote:
| As another commenter mentioned, a lot of people in the US
| learned to play Spades in the military.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| It's a US game, actually there are two games. Both follow from
| Whist and Bridge. There are, in the US, two games that go by
| the name of Spades but (as the primary differentiating
| characteristics) have different rules regarding bidding and
| scoring. In Black communities (the version discussed in the
| article) it's often played with a standard deck plus jokers
| (possibly removing other cards to make room for the jokers),
| and scoring is based on winning a bid and making book and some
| number of tricks over book (though not always, but the common
| form) which is similar to Contract Bridge and Whist. The other
| form is played with a standard deck and both partnerships can
| get points on each hand based on their bids, no need to make
| book (6 tricks as a base before getting points) just make your
| bid.
| MisterBastahrd wrote:
| I am in my mid 40s, and as a kid in Cajun country you usually
| had a pretty good idea of how often older folks (grandparents
| and older) socially interacted on a casual basis with the
| other side of the white / black divide by how well they knew
| the rules to four card games.
|
| The black communities usually played either Hearts or Spades.
|
| The white communities would instead play either Bourre (boo-
| ray) or the Louisiana variant of Pedro (pee-droh).
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bourr%C3%A9
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedro_(card_game)
|
| In unknown mixed company, most would settle on Hearts at
| first as it's the easiest to understand, and then usually
| alternate between Pedro and Spades.
| cschep wrote:
| I (white kid) grew up on the west coast of the US and played
| Spades growing up with my family. None of my friends knew
| Spades, but it seemed like everyone knew Hearts. My mom grew up
| on the east coast so I always kinda thought that she brought it
| with her out west. Had no idea it was cultural in other ways!
| chris_st wrote:
| There used to be a _fantastic_ spades app on the Palm Pilot (!)
| which played pretty well, including fairly sensible partner play.
| There was a URL where you could get the source, but it was a dead
| URL, alas.
|
| Anyone know a good spades app for iOS? I have "Spades card
| classic", which features pretty abysmal play, and "Spades
| Masters", which is online-with-other-people only.
| hogFeast wrote:
| I have heard that Bezos, Brin, and Ellison have a Spades group
| together. Huge lessons for business strategy.
| GZJOHN wrote:
| Interesting, I was surprised to see this presented as an African
| American originating game as it's been widely played for
| generations all over Canada.
| [deleted]
| 8note wrote:
| Hmm I learnt it from Microsoft, playing on either windows or the
| zine against computers only
| ratherlongname wrote:
| What score do people typically play to? I don't know. I can't
| read the font. _Sigh_ guess I 'll never know.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| 250, 300, 350, 500, and "other". The counts for each are 40,
| 33, 67, 151, and 40 (respectively).
| zdw wrote:
| I (as a white American) didn't know about this history, and have
| played Spades as a family game for as long as I can remember.
|
| Some interesting variations - we usually played with no Jokers,
| no bag, but with a negative score rule when not meeting bid.
| Also, a card selection mechanic if 2 players are playing - the
| players would alternating picking cards from from the deck,
| decide whether they wanted it, then keep it and discard the next
| card, or discard and have to keep the next card. This prevents
| knowing exactly what the other player has in the 2 player
| scenario.
| LynxInLA wrote:
| I (also white American) play the same rules and was taught them
| by my grandfather. He said he learned the game in the Navy
| during WWII, but I'm not sure if that timeline lines up.
| zdw wrote:
| I don't know the lineage past my parents, but my grandparents
| did play a lot of cards (I learned Canasta from my
| grandmother), and my grandfather was in the Navy in WWII, so
| it's definitely possible.
| saghm wrote:
| Those are the exact rules I learned from my father as well
| (both of us white Americans)
| Huwyt_Nashi_066 wrote:
| White-hating blacks are so awkward sometimes. They apparently
| cannot stop thinking about us, take childish pleasure in
| capitalizing "Black" but not "white" at every opportunity, and
| constantly perpetuate the hopeful idea that black culture is the
| envy of the world.
|
| And literally says that rules may be suspended if fried chicken
| is present...
| the_jeremy wrote:
| > How you play spades, is how you play life. When playing spades,
| you're dealt a hand and have no control over the cards you get --
| unless you're cheating. Your primary goal is to play each round
| to the best of your abilities...
|
| This is just "life is like a box of chocolates". I was hoping for
| some sort of actual prediction, where playing aggressively
| correlated with certain behaviors.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| I was hoping for that as well. There's certainly a wide variety
| of play styles demonstrated by my (white, non-military,
| American) family and friends. Some are sandbaggers, some are
| risk-takers, some focus more or less on the bidding versus the
| actual cards being played, some prefer rule variants that add
| more randomness, some prefer rules that make it more tactical
| or information based...though I can't say I could draw a link
| between those game habits and real life personalities.
| gumby wrote:
| I am normally ticked off by inventive presentations on the web
| (just give me a wall of text, please!) but really enjoyed this
| one.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I used to _hate_ spades, because I would get excoriated by my
| partner, for every mistake, and never given credit for doing
| well.
|
| I preferred Hearts, where I got to "stick it" to others.
|
| Yeah...I have issues.
| darkwizard42 wrote:
| Loved the article. I come from a family of four and sometime when
| I was in college we picked up Spades as a family. Definitely
| resonated with me as a way to bond with friends and family.
|
| also for those interested:
| https://www.trickstercards.com/home/spades/ is an excellently
| developed FREE online spades site that we used during the
| pandemic
| traceroute66 wrote:
| I have to say... what terrible UX !
|
| Scroll right? In a world where literally everyone else scrolls
| down ?
|
| Its completely un-natural if you're not using a tablet or
| smartphone ! Unless you have one of those fancy mice with the
| horizontal scroll button, but most people won't and will have to
| click and drag (rinse and repeat).
| munk-a wrote:
| Additionally the "cards" holding text sometimes ended up being
| too small to actually display all their text - causing sudden
| truncation and unreadable sentences.
|
| I really dislike that everyone needs to avoid just having a
| string of paragraphs.
|
| Lastly, the UX decisions made text unselectable for copying -
| and has prevented the author from actually injecting footer
| references for survey data and the like. It's a UI that makes
| the author fight against it to actually convey information.
| wilg wrote:
| Works great on a Mac, which have horizontally-scrolling
| trackpads or mice.
|
| But obviously they did this as a fun layout for a card game!
| traceroute66 wrote:
| > which have horizontally-scrolling trackpads or mice.
|
| Same category as tablets and smartphones my friend.
|
| How about the billions of other internet users who have a
| keyboard and mouse ? At least make it keyboard tap or mouse-
| click friendly !
| jacobolus wrote:
| The right and left arrow keys scroll one card at a time.
| nickalaso wrote:
| For me, I am also having an issue where the text is too large
| for the cards, causing large portions of text to not fit the
| screen and be unreadable. Interesting design concept, but
| appears to be buggy/not-tested.
| nomel wrote:
| This is similar to how cards are arranged in front of you in
| spades, and most card games. I think you can understand the
| artistic choice, from there.
| traceroute66 wrote:
| > I think you can understand the artistic choice, from there.
|
| A.K.A. Form over function / Style over substance ... a well
| trodden design road that never takes you in the right
| direction.
| [deleted]
| Matthias1 wrote:
| I wanted to say the opposite. Obviously, the author made a lot
| of unconventional design decisions, but they were all very well
| executed, and felt intuitive for me. For example, there were a
| couple of places where the graphs used shapes instead of just
| bars, but I don't think it ever hurt readability, to speak of.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| I am on desktop and found it immediately engaging. My monitor
| is wider than tall and it was nice to have something that
| exploited that instead of giving me a partial view of a
| vertical page with vast deserts of empty space on both sides.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| From the site guidelines:
|
| > Please don't complain about website formatting, back-button
| breakage, and similar annoyances. They're too common to be
| interesting. Exception: when the author is present. Then
| friendly feedback might be helpful.
|
| Your post and the ensuing thread is a great example of why this
| made it into the guidelines. An interesting article, but over
| half the comments are a discussion about the page's format. 1/4
| (at the time I submit this) of the comments are yours, and they
| add no value to the conversation.
| Chris2048 wrote:
| And who defines "interesting"? Mentioning what ratio of
| comments are traceroute66's has no value either.
| amw-zero wrote:
| The people who wrote the guidelines define what's
| interesting.
| reidjs wrote:
| I disagree, I think the horizontal scroll was done tastefully
| in this instance and they had plenty of signifiers to make it
| clear you are supposed to scroll right to view the timeline.
| devteambravo wrote:
| +1 on this. I thought the UX was fresh. But there tends to be
| lots of such nitpicks... I wonder if that has anything to do
| with the cultural stuff behind it.
| [deleted]
| klyrs wrote:
| I thought it was kinda cute, but immediately clicked reader-
| mode. It's better than the Guardian's evolving background
| images that totally break scrolling and readability...
| SMAAART wrote:
| How you play any game, is how you play life.
|
| Especially games like Monopoly.
| donio wrote:
| > Scroll right to start
|
| I'd rather not.
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