card-games – Play card games in Emacs

• Games
  • Trick-taking
  • Solitaire
  • Shedding and climbing
  • Rummy
  • Matching
  • Pegging
  • Capturing
  • More trick-taking
  • Climbing patience
  • Bridge
• TODO
• Install
  • From the package tarball
  • From a local ELPA archive
  • Manually
• Playing
• Testing
• Customization
• Development
• License

Card games for Emacs.

Renders SVG by default when display-graphic-p is t and rsvg is available. The default (UNICODE) symbols maybe customized by configuring card-game-symbols.

Games

To open the game menu type M-x card-game, or start a game directly with its command.

Trick-taking

• cg-bid – 500 (Bid). Win the auction, name the trump suit, then take tricks with your partner to reach 500 points before the opposing pair. Also playable live over the network (M-x cg-bid-host / cg-bid-join).
• cg-hearts – Hearts. Avoid taking hearts and the Queen of Spades, or take them all to "shoot the moon"; lowest score loses.
• cg-spades – Spades. Partnership bidding to 500; spades are always trump. Make your side's combined bid, mind the bags, dare a nil.
• cg-whist – Whist. Trump is the turned card, there is no bidding; score one point for each trick past the book of six.
• cg-ohhell – Oh Hell. The hand shrinks each round; bid the exact number of tricks you will take, no more and no fewer.

Solitaire

• cg-montana – Montana (also called Gaps). Each row is anchored by a Two and built upward in one suit, 2 through King; slide cards into the gaps until all four rows are sorted.
• cg-gaps – an alias for cg-montana.
• cg-hells-half-acre – the build-down variant: each row is anchored by a King and built downward, King through 2.
• cg-klondike – Klondike, the classic "Solitaire": build the four foundations up by suit from the Ace.
• cg-freecell – FreeCell: every card in view, four free cells, a game of nearly pure skill.
• cg-spider – Spider (two decks): build down regardless of suit, but only same-suit runs move; clear eight King-to-Ace runs.
• cg-yukon – Yukon: Klondike's layout dealt mostly face up, with any buried group movable and no stock.
• cg-canfield – Canfield: a 13-card reserve and a foundation base rank set by the deal; foundations wrap King to Ace.
• cg-forty-thieves – Forty Thieves: two decks, ten columns, eight foundations, build down by suit, and no second pass through the stock.
• cg-scorpion – Scorpion: build down by suit and free any buried group to assemble four King-to-Ace runs.
• cg-golf – Golf: clear the layout by playing exposed cards one rank above or below the waste top.
• cg-tripeaks – TriPeaks: the same, on three overlapping peaks, with Ace-King wrapping for long chains.
• cg-pyramid – Pyramid: remove pairs of exposed cards whose ranks sum to thirteen; Kings go alone.

Shedding and climbing

• cg-eights – Crazy Eights. Match the suit or rank of the discard; eights are wild and let you name the next suit.
• cg-president – President (Scum). Climb: play one to four of a rank, beat it or pass; first out rules, last out scrubs, and the roles trade cards on the next deal.

Rummy

• cg-gin – Gin Rummy. A two-handed duel: draw or take the discard, build sets and runs, and knock once your deadwood is ten or less, or go gin with none; your opponent then lays off and may undercut you. First to 100 wins.
• cg-rummy-basic – Rummy. Meld sets and runs onto the table and lay cards off onto them; empty your hand to go out and score the cards left in the other hands.
• cg-rum500 – Rummy 500. As above, but you score the cards you lay down and lose the cards left in your hand; first past 500 wins. Take a buried discard card with T: you take it and every card above it, and meld the chosen card at once.
• cg-handfoot – Hand & Foot. A partnership Canasta cousin: play a hand and then a foot, build books of a rank with Twos and Jokers wild, and go out once your side has completed two of them. Each round opens with a rising go-down minimum (50, 90, 120, 150); red threes are bonus cards; and you can pick up the discard pile (p) by melding its top card with two matching naturals.

Matching

• cg-go-fish – Go Fish. Ask another player for a rank you hold; collect all four to lay down a book, and make the most books.
• cg-old-maid – Old Maid. One Queen is set aside; discard pairs and draw blind from your neighbour, and do not be left with the odd Queen.

Pegging

• cg-cribbage – Cribbage. Lay two cards to the crib, cut a starter, peg toward 31, then count fifteens, pairs, runs, flushes, and his nobs. Two-handed to 121.

Capturing

• cg-scopa – Scopa. A 40-card deck; capture table cards by value and sweep the board for a scopa. Score cards, coins, the sette bello, and primiera to 11.
• cg-casino – Casino. The full deck; capture by pairs and sums and score cards, spades, the casinos, and aces to 21.

More trick-taking

• cg-euchre – Euchre. A 24-card deck with the two bowers; order up or call trump and take three of five tricks. Partnership to 10.
• cg-pitch – Auction Pitch. Bid for the pitch; your first lead sets trump. Score High, Low, Jack, and Game; first to 7.
• cg-briscola – Briscola. A fixed trump turned from the deal and no obligation to follow suit; capture the Aces and Threes. Partnership to 61 of the 120 points.

Climbing patience

• cg-spite – Spite & Malice. Race the computer to empty your goal pile onto shared centre piles that build Ace to Queen; Kings are wild.

Bridge

• cg-bridge – Contract Bridge. A full auction (bids, pass, double, redouble), play with the dummy exposed, and classic rubber scoring with vulnerability. You are South; when you declare you play the dummy too. The bidding AI is a small natural system, sensible but no expert.

TODO

• make the suit symbols customizable (cg-symbols) and obey them
• a Texinfo manual
• finish checkdoc docstrings across the per-game files (the shared engine files are clean; make compile is warning-free)
• renderer "skins": let games subclass the display components (text, SVG, full-window SVG)
• a manual card-size control for the full-window SVG UI
• more games

Install

From the package tarball

make package           # builds card-games-1.0.90.tar

Then in Emacs: M-x package-install-file RET card-games-1.0.90.tar.

From a local ELPA archive

make elpa              # builds dist/ (archive-contents + tar)

(add-to-list 'package-archives '("cg" . "/path/to/dist/"))
(package-refresh-contents)
(package-install 'card-games)

Manually

Put the cg-*.el and card-games.el files on your load-path and (require 'card-games).

Playing

Both games work with the keyboard everywhere and with the mouse on a graphical display.

• 500: b bid, p pass, arrows + RET to play (or click a card), n next hand / new game, ? help.
• Gaps: arrows to move (or hjkl when cg-keys is classic), RET to fill a gap (or click it), r redeal, u undo, n new, ? help.
• Klondike / FreeCell / Spider / Yukon: arrows move between piles, RET picks up a movable run and drops it, f sends a card to a foundation, a auto-plays everything it can, u undo, n new, ? help. On the stock pile, RET deals or recycles.
• Hearts / Spades: arrows choose a card, RET plays it (in Hearts, RET marks a card to pass and p sends the three), n new match, ? help.
• Crazy Eights: arrows choose, RET plays, d draws, x passes, n new deal, ? help.

On a graphical display, v toggles the full-window SVG table. A Card size slider (and the + / - / 0 keys) resizes the cards, and in 500 the ? Help / Rules button explains play. Every game accepts the mouse: click cards, board slots, buttons, and the slider.

Testing

This is a 1.0.90 pre-test snapshot. To try it:

1. make compile && make test – should be warning-free and all green.
2. M-x card-game opens the menu, or jump straight in, e.g. M-x cg-klondike, M-x cg-bid (500), M-x cg-gin, M-x cg-handfoot.
3. On a graphical display, press v in 500 for the full-window SVG table and play entirely with the mouse: click a bid, click five kitty cards and the Discard button, click cards to play, move the Card size slider, and open ? Help / Rules.

Feedback most wanted: anything a mouse-only player who is new to Emacs finds confusing or unreachable, rules bugs, and rendering glitches.

Customization

M-x customize-group RET cg-svg and RET card-games:

• cg-svg-theme-colors – derive the highlight ring and card backs from your theme (on by default).
• cg-bid-felt-color – the 500 table felt.
• cg-svg-card-width, cg-svg-card-height, cg-svg-card-shadow, cg-svg-font-family – card appearance.
• cg-svg-card-back – card-back pattern: dots, rings, or solid.
• cg-symbols – the Unicode suit glyphs (and the joker) drawn on cards.
• cg-svg-four-color – draw a four-colour deck (clubs green, diamonds blue-purple).
• cg-keys – emacs (default) or classic (adds vi-style hjkl and SPC).
• cg-bid-animate, cg-bid-ai-delay, cg-bid-trick-pause – pace the 500 AI so play is watchable and completed tricks linger.
• M-x card-games-set-theme – apply a preset (classic, dark, contrast).

Development

make compile     # byte-compile (should be warning-free)
make test        # run the ERT suite
make checkdoc    # documentation lint
make release     # clean + test + package + source tarball

License

GPL-3.0-or-later. See the file headers; add a COPYING file with the full GPLv3 text for distribution.