War (card Game) Article Index for
War 		Website Links For
War 		 

Information About

War (card Game)
SHOPPER'S DELIGHT
 
Shop For:  
Department
Price Minimum:
Price Maximum:
      



Each player is dealt half the deck, and both players play simultaneously. Each player shows one card, and whoever has the higher card takes both cards shown and places them at the bottom of his deck. In case of a tie, both players play three face-down cards and one face-up card, and these face-up cards decide who will receive all the cards. If there is another tie, the process is repeated, etc. In all cases of ties, face-down cards are exposed before being collected. In some variations, smaller numbers of face-down cards are played(for example, one card is placed face down, while the second is played face up). In one bloodthirsty variation, the number of face-down cards equals the pip value of the cards, with face cards being ten and ace eleven.

Whoever has no card to play when they are required to play one is the loser. Some variations will have the winner being the one who is able to get rid of all his cards first.


WAR STRATEGY


War seems to be a game of chance. However, a player with an excellent memory can improve upon his or her chances of winning by ordering the cards that the player wins in rounds.

This is best demonstrated with an example – suppose Alice Is Playing To Beat Bob . The game begins with Bob beating Alice's 6 with a 10. Alice notices that Bob collects the two cards and puts them on the bottom of his deck with the 10 on top of the 6. In the next round, Alice beats Bob's 8 with a jack. Alice now collects the two cards and places them at the bottom of her deck with the jack on top of the 8 so that the next pass through the deck will begin jack beats 10 (Alice collects), 8 beats 6 (Alice collects again). If Alice had instead placed the 8 over the jack, the next pass through the deck would go 10 beats 8 (Bob collects), jack beats 6 (Alice collects), which is not as beneficial to Alice.

However, over the long-term, as the deck sizes change (as both players collect cards) and as more and more cards are revealed, it becomes extremely difficult—indeed, nearly impossible—to implemente this strategy. Only a player with an extremely good memory and the ability to visualize extremely quickly card positions in both decks will be able to consistently implement this strategy over the course of a game.

Something analogous to Natural Selection occurs in war: if you have fewer cards they tend to be of higher quality. Conversely, as you accumulate cards, they become weaker. The rule for handling ties mitigates against this problem somewhat, however.


CHEATING


It is possible to Cheat by taking advantage of an opponent who is not paying attention. Suppose the first player plays a Jack and the second player plays a Queen; the first player quickly reaches out and claims the trick before the other player really has a chance to look at the card. The reason that cheating in this way is easier in War than in many other card games is that the game of War plays very fast.


COMPUTER WAR


There was an old Apple II version of this game, contained in the game "little computer people". In the game, the winner of each trick always put the cards on the bottom of the deck in the same order. Frequently, the game wound up cycling; that is, the same positions would repeat indefinitely with no winner.

A Java version appeared on the web in the late 1990's in which a user could watch the game played automatically at his or her choice of speeds. Whether or not this site still exists is unknown. However, it is possible that this example may be the one mentioned.


MULTIPLAYER WAR & VARIANTS


War may be played with more than 2 players. A war occurs only when the 2 highest cards tie. The war may involve only those players, or all players. The main variant is adding Joker s to the deck. If a joker is played, there is an automatic war. Alternatively, the joker beats all other cards. The casino variant of this game - Casino War is quite popular in many casinos though the rules are slightly different.


RELATED GAMES


The game of Top Trumps is similar to war in that the highest card value wins. However, in this case a special pack on a particular theme is used such that the winner of the previous round can choose one of a number of categories for the value, increasing the complexity of the game.