Customer Reviews

A Dictionary of Card Games (Oxford Reference)

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"A Dictionary Of Card Games" by David Parlett is one of the most comprehensive books ever published on Western card games. A companion volume to the earlier "The Oxford Guide To Card Games" by the same British author, it gives the rules, in a clear and concise yet entertaining manner, of several hundred card games; just about every European and American card game you can think of, including "national" card games such as Jazz (Switzerland), Ulti (Hungary) and Scopa (Italy). You will also find the rules for a number of the "historic" card games that have now largely gone out of fashion, but which you may come across in novels and films: Primiera, Trappola, Bezique, Boston Whist, Conquian and many others.

The games are arranged alphabetically, with many cross-references, making it easy to find what you are looking for and at the same time making for fascinating browsing. A nice touch is that you also get a bit of mini-history with many of the games: where and when it originated. Also, you will find a short section on Tarot games -- yes, it is a deck for playing games with, the idea of "divination" using Tarot cards is a much later invention -- in the book.

The introduction is, in line with the rest of the contents, very informative. It discusses the classification of card games, answers the question "Why are there so many card games?", and finishes off with five pages of etiquette at the card table and sensible all-around advice. There is also a long appendix listing terms used in card-play.

A highly recommended book and a superb reference work on card games; an absolute must-have for the shelves of anyone interested in the subject.

There may be millions of card games in the world, but there are probably more books about card games. Most of them just cover the same games over and over again.

This book covers the games that most of the others tend to miss. This book includes:
Great games of the past like Hombre.
Games played widely in other countries like Scopone.
Unusual games not played widely anywhere like Ninety-Nine.

All in all, a book that deserves to stand out from the crowd of lesser "Hoyles."

David Parlett is one of the best and most readable experts on western card games, but almost all of the material in this volume + a lot more, is included in his " Penguin Encyclopaedia of Card Games" . The penguin version divivdes the games into families of related games, which makes it much easier to use, and it is more thorough.
So there is really no reason to buy this - excellent - book.