War (card game) Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description
War is a card game for two players. It uses a standard Western 52-playing card deck; aces can be high or low.Each player is dealt half the deck, and both players play simultaneously. Each player shows one card, and whoever has the higher card takes both cards shown and places them at the bottom of his deck. In case of a tie, both players play three face-down cards and one face-up card, and these face-up cards decide who will receive all the cards. If there is another tie, the process is repeated, etc. In all cases of ties, face-down cards are exposed before being collected. In some variations, smaller numbers of face-down cards are played. In one bloodthirsty variation, the number of face down cards equals the pip value of the cards, with face cards being ten and ace eleven.
When a player runs out of face-down cards to play, they turn over their pile of collected cards and use it. Whoever has no card to play when they are required to play one is the loser.
War seems to be a game of chance. However, a player with an excellent memory can improve upon his or her chances of winning by ordering the cards that the player wins in rounds.
This is best demonstrated with an example in which Player 1 is playing to win: Suppose the game begins with Player 2 beating Player 1's 6 with a 10. Player 1 notices that Player 2 collects the two cards and puts them on the bottom of his deck with the 10 on top of the 6. In the next round, Player 1 beats Player 2's 8 with a jack. Player 1 now collects the two cards and places them at the bottom of his deck with the jack on top of the 8 so that the next pass through the deck will begin jack beats 10 (Player 1 collects), 8 beats 6 (Player 1 collects again). If Player 1 had instead placed the 8 over the jack, the next pass through the deck would go 10 beats 8 (Player 2 collects), jack beats 6 (player 1 collects), which is not as beneficial in Player 1.
However, over the long-term, as the deck sizes change (as both players collect cards) and as more and more cards are revealed, it becomes extremely difficult—indeed, nearly impossible—to implement this strategy. Only a player with an extremely good memory and the ability to visualize extremely quickly card positions in both decks will be able to consistently implement this strategy over the course of a game.
It is possible to cheat by taking advantage of an opponent who is not paying attention. Suppose the first player plays a Jack and the second player plays a Queen; the first player quickly reaches out and claims the trick before the other player really has a chance to look at the card. The reason that cheating in this way is easier in War than in many other card games is that the game of War plays very fast.
There was an old Apple II version of this game, contained in the game "little computer people". In the game, the winner of each trick always put the cards on the bottom of the deck in the same order. Frequently, the game wound up cycling; that is, the same positions would repeat indefinitely with no winner.War strategy
Cheating
Computer War