My kids have gotten into playing cards now. They love playing Go Fish, Crazy 8s, 3 Up 3 Down, and War. It's actually a lot of fun to play with them but I wish I had more energy. For some reason, sitting on the couch with them playing cards induces a sleepiness I never knew I possessed. I think the most logical explanation is that I'm constantly "on alert" as an adult, so for me to sit down and relax allows my body to feel tired, hence the sleepiness. Reading books to them used to do the same thing to me, but now that both my children know how to read on their own, I haven't read a book to them...in a while.
Having my children playing cards resurfaced an old memory I had from a card game my grandfather taught me. He would deal out the cards in a Solitaire style with seven wells. The first well only had one card face up. The second well had one card face down and one card face up. The third well would have two cards face down and one card face up. Once 7 wells were dealt out in this same pattern, the remaining cards in the deck were all dealt face up evenly distributed between wells 2-7.
 |
| Game Set Up. |
The cards are then linked by number and suit in order. Whatever cards are underneath the card to be moved must follow the card as you move cards between the columns. Face down cards can only be flipped if the whole column of face up cards are moved to connect into a different column. For the photo above, some viable moves would be moving the 8 of spades from column 2 underneath the 9 of spades in column 3. You can also move the Jack of diamonds from column 6 underneath the Queen of diamonds in column 4. Both these moves would result in being able to flip a card from the wells in column 2 and 6. Once a column was empty, you could move Kings into their place, but the maximum number of columns was 7.
I never learned the name of this game. It might be a Chinese name. But I loved playing as a child. The winning percentage of this game is extremely low. By a completely random shuffle, the odds of winning were less than 10%.
Because this game was so difficult, I would sometimes continue the game by moving Kings into extra columns just to see if I could win the game that way. If I won with extra columns, it was nice, but it didn't feel as special. For the games I was able to win playing according to the actual rules, I made a wish.
 |
| No more moves. |
The closest game to this one I've found is a card game called Scorpion. The initial deal and playing rules are the most similar I've seen to the one my grandfather taught me.
 |
| I can play Scorpion online if I wanted |
I taught this game to my daughter one day when she said she was bored. It's a little too much for her to handle right now, but I hope one day she can enjoy this card game by herself and have fond memories of playing cards.
