If you have never played cards before, this book is the ideal introduction. Or if you have a basic idea of the rules of some games, it will help you extend your existing knowledge and add new games to your repertoire. You will learn all the basic rules, understand the reasons why players play certain cards, discover the winning strategies and always be able to play the right card at the right time. The book covers all the most popular card games, including: Whist, Solo, Napoleon, Clobbiosh, Belot, Black Maria, Piquet, Five Hundred, Poker, Brag, Cassino, Rummy, Kaluki, Gin Rummy, Canasta, Cribbage and Pontoon.

While board games can appear almost primitive in the digital age, eurogames--also known as German-style board games--have increased in popularity nearly concurrently with the rise of video games. Eurogames have simple rules and short playing times and emphasize strategy over luck and conflict. This book examines the form of eurogames, the hobbyist culture that surrounds them, and the way that hobbyists experience the play of such games. It chronicles the evolution of tabletop hobby gaming and explores why hobbyists play them, how players balance competitive play with the demands of an intimate social gathering, and to what extent the social context of the game encounter shapes the playing experience. Combining history, cultural studies, leisure studies, ludology, and play theory, this innovative work highlights a popular alternative trend in the gaming community.

Parenting research has always faced substantial methodological challenges, assumptions and stigma, limiting understanding and translation to more family-centred support. In addition, the focus of most research has focused on the early years with far less knowledge about the role of parents in pre-adolescence, adolescence, and the transition to adulthood or beyond. Parenting work lacks diversity with regards to inclusion across cultural settings and is usually limited to mothers, the role of fathers, grandparents, adoptive and foster parents and step parents is under-represented.

This book constitutes the refereed post proceedings of the 18th International Conference on Advances in Computer Games, ACG 2023, held online, during November 28–30, 2023. The 14 full papers included in this book were carefully reviewed and selected from 29 submissions. They were organized in topical sections as follows: Chess and its Variants, Solving Games, Board Games, Card Games, Player Investigation, Math, Games, and Puzzles.

An impassioned look at games and game design that offers the most ambitious framework for understanding them to date. As pop culture, games are as important as film or television—but game design has yet to develop a theoretical framework or critical vocabulary. In Rules of Play Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman present a much-needed primer for this emerging field. They offer a unified model for looking at all kinds of games, from board games and sports to computer and video games. As active participants in game culture, the authors have written Rules of Play as a catalyst for innovation, filled with new concepts, strategies, and methodologies for creating and understanding games. Building an aesthetics of interactive systems, Salen and Zimmerman define core concepts like "play," "design," and "interactivity." They look at games through a series of eighteen "game design schemas," or conceptual frameworks, including games as systems of emergence and information, as contexts for social play, as a storytelling medium, and as sites of cultural resistance. Written for game scholars, game developers, and interactive designers, Rules of Play is a textbook, reference book, and theoretical guide. It is the first comprehensive attempt to establish a solid theoretical framework for the emerging discipline of game design.

This book includes classic games from the past, such as piquet and bezique; national games from abroad, such as skat and preference; timeless favorites like rummy; and modern inventions and discoveries, such as ninety-nine and barbu. It has been specially compiled for three types of players: beginners, who have never touched a card before but are willing to find out what fun they have been missing; regulars, who play one or two favorites regularly and need a reference to resolve disputed points; and explorers, who enjoy experimenting with card games from different times and places.