News & Updates:

Like the website?
Recommend Us To a Friend

CARD GAMES FOR THE YOUNG CHILDREN

PIG

This is a very hilarious game for children or for adults to play with children. Anybody can learn the game in two or three minutes, and one extra minute makes you an expert!

Number of Players: 3 to 13. Five or 6 make the best game.

Cards: Four of a kind for each player in the game. For example, 5 players would use 20 cards: 4 Aces, 4 Kings, 4 Queens, 4 Jacks, and 4 10's. For 6 players you would add the four 9's.

The Deal: Any player shuffles and deals 4 cards to each player.

Object: To get 4 of a kind in your own hand, or to be quick to notice it when somebody else gets 4 of a kind.

The Play: Each player looks at his hand to see if he was dealt 4 of a kind. If nobody has 4 of a kind, each player puts some unwanted card face down on the table and passes it to the player at his left, receiving a card at the same time from the player at his right.

Each player looks at his hand as it appears with the newly-received card. If, still, nobody has 4 of a kind, each player once again passes a card to the left and gets a new card from the right.

The play is continued in this way until some player has 4 of a kind in his hand. That player stops passing or receiving cards since he is satisfied with his hand as it is. Instead of playing on, he puts his finger to his nose.

The other players must be quick to notice this, and each of them must stop passing in order to put a finger to his nose. The last player to put a finger to his nose is the Pig.

Skillful Play: In trying to put together 4 of a kind, you must usually start with a pair. For example, suppose you are dealt 2 Kings, 1 Queen, and 1 Ace. Keep the two Kings, and pass either the Queen or the Ace. As soon as you get another King, save all 3 of them, and pass your fourth card. Sooner or later your fourth King will come in.

Don't get so interested in looking for your own 4 of a kind that you are blind to what the other players are doing. Keep one eye on everybody else, particularly on those who look very eagerly at the cards they are receiving. The eager player probably has 3 of a kind and is just waiting for the fourth.

The best Pig player I know is a little girl who doesn't try very hard to make 4 of a kind. She always tries to look excited, and talks and squeals as she gets each card, just as though she had 3 of a kind. While doing all of this, she watches the other players to see which of them are interested in her and which are interested in their own hands.

She knows that the players who are interested in her have bad hands, but that those who are thinking about the game have good hands. So little Lisa knows which players to watch, and she is never caught!

Related terms include collectable card game and euchre card game.