How to Build a House of Cards

Series Summary

A card game is any game that uses playing cards, either traditional or game-specific. Countless card games exist, including families of related games, such as poker. Some games have formally standardized rules, while rules for others can vary by region, culture and individual preference. A card game is played with a deck of cards intended for that game that are identical in size and shape. In this free video series, a gaming specialist teaches a number of card games that can be enjoyed by the whole family. Learn how to play Cribbage, Euchre and Gin Rummy, as well as simple games like Go Fish, War and Uno. Expand the options of card games by playing more obscure games like Rummoli, Skip-Bo and Oh, Heck. Pass the time or enjoy a family night with these card games.

Video Transcript

"Hi, I'm Charles. I'm here working at Games of Berkeley, and today we're going to look at building a house of cards. The most important thing, or the most difficult thing about building a house of cards is getting the cards that are that are going to be a little bit rough, or rather, a little bit, with a little bit of friction on them. You can see I'm using magic cards here because they're paper, and they can be a little bit easier to work with. If you take a deck of cards, for example, like these fresh out of the plastic, no friction. It's just going to slide, so you want to get something a little bit rougher. The basic thing that you want to do is set up pyramids, and you need to get them to balance just right. Or, sometimes it helps if you bend the card a little bit because then it gives it a little bit of a place to go. And it doesn't always work the first time. Now, one thing that you can do that will hold it together is you put a card on top, and a lot of times just that weight on top of it is enough to keep it up. You're always doing kind of a balancing act here when you're putting these together to keep it, enough weight on it and enough balance on it so that it's not going to fall. Once you get that basic technique down then it's just a matter of going across and up. You want to give yourself enough of a of a of a of a base that you can build a pyramid up. Once you get that basic idea down you can get really creative and start doing things that are not pyramids. For example, you could do a castle. You could do, you know, probably do a tower if you really tried. A lot, the other thing that you can do if you start getting excited about this is you can try stacking them the short way instead of the long way. And that's what happens when you don't have a cross piece, there we go. The other important thing about building a house of cards is to remember that it is called a house of cards for a reason. It's going to fall down, and if you start gettin' too wrapped up in not having it fall down you're just not going to have any fun at all. The other thing that you can get for these sometimes is is clips, little plastic clips, and what they will do is they will hold the cards together. That's really, really good if you want to have something that's going to be really large. For just a small, little, fun one like this I think it's kind of cheating. And that's basically how you build a house of cards."