My favorite card game ever is called Russian Bank. I've never met anyone outside of my family who had ever heard of it before, although I've heard rumors of others.

My favorite card game ever is called Russian Bank.

Looks interesting. I think the closest I've come is Double Solitaire. I sometimes played quadruple solitaire with Mom & both sisters.

rummy 500 was always big in my house. As was head-to-head solitaire (where you can build on eachothers aces piles). Hearts. A friend taught me Canasta, which I liked, but the computer variants sucked. would love to play with people. Ugg. That's the shitty thing of living alone... nobody to play games with! Is there a gaming singles network???

My family was big into hearts until my father discovered bridge.

In middle school we used to play scum (which has about a gazillion alternate names I can't remember right now) and speed in the hallway in front of the library.

Is there a gaming singles network?

I have heard a lot of game players use Meetup.com to find others to play with.

In middle school we used to play scum (which has about a gazillion alternate names I can't remember right now)

I was going to ask if this was the same as Spit or Speed until you said

and speed

man I got some bruises on my hand playing Speed against my shark of a sister.

No, scum is the one with 4 players and after each round the loser becomes Scum, the winner becomes President (or King/Queen), and the 2 in the middle become vice-scum and vice-president, and your ranking gets you some kind of advantage or disadvantage in the next round.

And er, obviously I don't remember how it's actually played. But for 7th and 8th grade, it was just about all I did during my free periods.

I married into a fiendishly cutthroat gaming family. I came to dread Christmas and Thanksgiving because after we ate, out would come the Parcheesi/Frustration(?) board, along with all the pent-up family issues. Hubby and his family would by-pass opportunities to win if they could put the piece of one of the others back to the beginning, and they became quite inscensed with me for thinking winning the game was the point of playing the game.

Raised by wolves, all of them.

Ooooo Parcheesi! A family fav!!! Love that game.

Ya, my mom remarried into a cutthroat poker family. I learned to play poker at a young age from some very tense folks. To this day I have to tone down when playing casual friendly games with anyone else. O lord if you didn't anty up in the right order, or with the right amount, or announce what game before the anty... oy vey.

I don't think my family is aggressive about winning but you sure as hell better know when your turn is and take it in a timely manner!

My favorite card game ever is called Russian Bank.

Looks interesting. I think the closest I've come is Double Solitaire.

That is what we called double solitaire growing up. Of course, that may be because my mother didn't want to use its French name, crapette. Russian Bank sounds much nicer.

There's a great French trick-avoidance game called "Le Barbu" where each hand you pick a different objective (no tricks, no hearts, no queen, no king of hearts aka "le barbu", the bearded one, etc.) based on your hand. It takes a long time because each player has to go through all possible objectives, but it's very fun.

For rummy fans, I've had good fun with the Mystery Rummy series. Each one is based on making three-of-a-kind melds, but they all have slightly different twists. In "Jack the Ripper", meld colors are all potential suspects in the case, and there are victim cards that allow you to draw extra cards, etc. There's also "Murders in the Rue Morgue" and "Jekyll and Hyde", which is for two players.