How to Play Two-Player Card Games
Some card games, such as go fish and hearts, are just not meant for two players. However, there are dozens of games two can play. Two that are fairly simple to learn to play are War and Spit. All you need to play either game is a regular poker-sized deck of cards and a little bit of table room.
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Instructions
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How to Play Spit
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1
Remove the jokers from the deck and set them aside. Divide the rest of the deck exactly in half. Do not look at the face side of the cards.
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2
Have each player deal out five cards facedown. Place them in a row, left to right, just like you were playing solitaire. These are card stacks one, two, three, four and five, respectively. Add four more facedown cards to stack one, three to stack two, two to stack three and one to stack four. Stack five should only have one card in it. Turn the top card of each stack faceup.
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3
Hold the remaining cards in a facedown stack in your hand. Do not look at the face side of these cards. Have each player say "spit" at the same time, and put the top card from his pile in the center of the table.
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4
Place a card from your five piles on either spit pile if it is one more or one less than the top cards. For example, if there is a nine on the spit pile, she can play an eight or a 10. Suits are irrelevant in this game. Once she plays a card from her stack she can turn over the facedown card underneath it. Now that card is available for play. If a stack gets down to zero, she can move a faceup card from another stack to its spot. If no one can make a move, repeat step 3.
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5
Continue play until one player gets rid of all the cards in his stack piles. This player gets to choose one of the spit piles. The other player must take the remaining pile. Repeat step 2 to lay out the cards again. Then repeat step 3. Keep playing in this fashion until one player does not have enough cards left to complete all of his stacks. At this point tell him to deal out the cards as in step 2, stopping when he runs out and turning the cards on top of each pile faceup. Now there is only one spit pile to play on.
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6
End the game when a player gets rid of all of his stack cards and slaps the empty spit pile upon completion.
How to Play War
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7
Deal out all of the cards in the deck. You can leave the jokers in if you like. Have each player hold his cards in a stack, facedown. Choose who will go first and have him lay down his top card faceup. Then the other player should do the same. Whoever plays the higher card takes both of the cards and adds them facedown to the bottom of his stack. Aces are high.
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8
Continue playing in this fashion until both players play the same value of card on the same turn, regardless of the suit. Now it's time to start a war. Have each player lay down the next three cards in his stack facedown and place the fourth card on top of the pile faceup. Whoever plays the highest fourth card gets all the cards involved in the war.
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9
Hold another war if the fourth cards played by both players are the same value. If a player doesn't have enough cards, he plays until he runs out and turns the last card played faceup.
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10
Play until one player runs out of cards, making the player with all the cards the winner. This could take less than 10 minutes or up to several hours.
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Tips & Warnings
Don't look at your cards before you play them. The other player should see their values first.
