Playing card games without the cards

Introduction

I have a soft spot for games that require little setup and little space. Of note in this category are games that require only a standard 52 (or 54) card deck, of which there are many good examples, like Hearts, Spades, and Egyptian Rat Screw; even better are those games that require absolutely no equipment at all. There are several traditional games that match this description, many of which with reputations as road trip time wasters or children’s games. Nonetheless, I do enjoy many of these, and keep a list on this website here.

In this post, I will discuss something different—variants of real card games played without the cards. As far as I know these variants are my original inventions; I haven’t found reference to them on the Internet.

These cardless variants share these key rules:

• Instead of holding physical cards, each player's cards only exist in their own imagination.
• When drawing cards, players may imagine drawing whatever cards they'd like.
• Even so, players must not change their held cards after they've been drawn (as if they were physical cards).

BS Poker: A Case Study

The card game I first played cardless is BS Poker, which I will briefly describe. Each player starts with two cards, and the game proceeds in rounds. Once a round begins, a starting player will declare a poker hand that they think can be made out of all players' cards, including their own. Then, on each player's turn, they can either declare a poker hand that is better than the previous player's declared hand, or they can challenge the previous player's declared hand. If the challenge is successful (i.e. the declared hand cannot be composed from everyone's cards), then the previous player loses the round. If the challenge fails (e.g. the declared hand can be composed from everyone's cards), then the current player loses the round. The losing player will now draw an additional card in all future rounds, and the next round begins. There are several detailed explanations of the normal version's rules (e.g. on this blog), so I won’t reproduce them here.

This game is particularly easy to play without cards because players only draw cards once at the beginning of the game and never change their cards. An example is illustrative:

Round 1

Player A imagines drawing their starting hand: two 2s

Player B imagines drawing their starting hand: two 6s

Player A: a pair of sixes (guaranteed to have it)

Player B: four sixes (using their two wild cards and the two sixes Player A just claimed)

Player A: calls BS, but challenge unsuccessful and gains a card

Round 2

Player A imagines drawing their starting hand: three 7s

Player B imagines drawing their starting hand: two 5s

Player A: a pair of eights (to draw B into a trap)

Player B: three fives (guessing that Player B has at least one wildcard)

Player A: calls BS, challenge successful, B gains a card

Games tend to play out similarly to rounds of normal BS Poker, except that there likely will be more wild cards than normal (though in practice I find that picking a lot of wild cards for yourself is usually not strong).

As an aside, It's probably too much cognitive load to expect players to remember the suits of all of their cards, so I generally play without suits and thus without flushes.

Other Games

I've also played Coup cardless. Each player picks their own two roles at the beginning of the game, and can also pick their own roles when drawing cards. It works decently well, except that

• It may be somewhat difficult to keep track of how many coins you have.
• In the original game, a relatively important element of strategy (especially in the endgame) is that there are only a limited number of cards for each role. This limit to the number of cards per role is difficult to replicate without physical cards.

Another game I've played cardless is Love Letter. This kinda works, except that

• It's a key feature to the game that there are no duplicate cards of higher value. You can try to replicate this with a rule I call the paradox rule: whoever takes an action that would be impossible in the real version of the game is eliminated. For example, say a 7 (only one allowed in the game) has been discarded. If Player A is holding a 7, and someone else asks to see their card via a 2, then Player A is eliminated immediately for introducing a paradox. However, it's hard to memorize which cards have already been discarded and the application of this rule is often complicated.
• Players draw cards frequently, which can be hard to keep track of.
• Also, the 3 is completely overpowered and should probably be banned entirely.

I expect the card games that will play decently well are those that satisfy a few properties:

• Each player only holds a small number of cards e.g. five or less.
• There are a limited number of types of cards e.g. thirteen playing card ranks, five roles in Coup, ten roles in Love Letter; probably too hard to remember exact playing cards.
• Drawing cards is relatively rare (a game where you draw cards every round is not ideal).
• There is almost no important game state outside the cards that players hold.

Overall Thoughts

I think that these variants are pretty fun, though a necessary prerequisite is that everyone in your playgroup knows all the rules of the game very well (e.g. can memorize what every role does without a reference). Also, these variants do require more from players’ memory and especially their honesty. A dishonest player (i.e. a player who arbitrarily changes the cards they have in their mind) will completely ruin the game. This could potentially be mitigated by requiring players to write down the cards that they pick before the game starts (e.g. in their phone’s Notes app). However, this is impractical for games where people redraw cards and somewhat defeats the purpose of playing games that don't require any additional equipment.

If you end up trying these variants, please let me know what you think! You can contact me at erictong.ext[at]gmail.com.