[MeridianFC]

I know many of the traditional card games can be played for money, most famously Bridge for an amount of money a point. I was reading through an old edition (c. 1930) of the Rules of Card Games I have, just to keep up on Panguingue and Bid Whist you know, when I came upon an interesting take on Hearts. The mechanics of the game are played as normal but at the end of each game, everyone puts out a token for each heart they've taken and, in the simplified scoring version, the one with the lowest take gets all the tokens. I thought about tweaking this format so that it operates as above but in addition if a player shoots the moon all players who get caught give the winner of the hand 26 tokens. Also an amount would be set aside for the first player to hit the match total, typically 500. It would certainly allow for some wild ass gamblin'.

A world of warning, if I used my normal small bet (.25) as the point mark, one could be out $125+ in a game (500 points), that's without a player shooting the moon.

In any case might add some spice to those nights when you can only get 4 players.

[Captn_All_In]

That is a great find! I can't wait to add it to our thurs night rotation!! A few weeks ago we added in some cinch to spice stuff up! It was a blast!! My group always plays hearts when we travel on vacation because we get the wives in on it!!

Thanks Again for sharing!!

[MeridianFC]

FWIW I just ran a couple of simulations to see what the spreads would be like. I just used the regular old Microsrote Hearts everyone has on their PC, where the computer players aren't very good. For the couple of games I ran (one game to 500; .25/point; 26pts for win or $6.50):

Player A -$3.75 (shot the moon once)
Player B +$18.50 (bonus for winner)
Player C +$.75
Player D -$9.75

There's not too terribly much skill involved, other than the normal pay attention kind that's required of Hearts, but seems fun for those of a mind.

[Millertime]

That is a sweet idea I play hearts all of the time on my laptop but never even thought of trying to gamble playing hearts!

[jdunford]

My family always plays Euchre on Boxing Day ... er... the day after Christmas. They usually get 3 or 4 tables going, with partners moving up and down as they win or lose. We play 9's and up in the deck, which is the most common in Canada (even though a quick google search tells you that 7's and up is supposedly the standard). We only play for quarters, but basically it's 1 "token" per point differential at the end of the game (and if you get a lone hand to win, the theoretical max score would be 13-0). It's also 1 token for getting all 5 tricks (scoring 2-points) in a hand, 2 tokens for euchring your opponents (getting 3 or more when your opponents chose suit), and 2 tokens for a 5-trick lone hand (4-points). It's mostly just for fun (no one's going to go broke), but puts a little more than just pride on the line.

Again, it's not really a game of skill. Once you've played for a while, you just glance at your hand and most of the time know exactly what to do and what the outcome will be. But its fun to trash-talk after euchring someone!