World of Card Games

There was a server outage this afternoon from about 5:25 PM EST (Boston USA time) to 5:47 PM EST. It was a networking problem at the server. My apologies for the interruption in your games!

You can now see the pass direction and the number of hands that have been played in Hearts. The pass direction is shown as "<" for left, ">" for right, and "^" for across. If there was no passing, then only the hand count is shown.

Here, the pass direction is right, and it's the first hand of the game

If this feature bugs you, you can turn it off! Click on your user name in the upper right corner, and scroll down in the panel that opens until you get to the "Hide Widgets" line. Check the box next to Hearts, and the feature will turn off.

Turn off the feature by checking "Hide widgets" for Hearts in your User Settings

This morning's update fixed a couple of minor bugs.

In addition, I tinkered with the strategy of the Spades bots. There are small changes in their bidding and also in the way that they play.

Please keep in mind that sometimes it's hard to know what to bid, and the bots are not perfect! If you spot a particularly egregious bidding or playing error, where it's obvious that a bot did something bone-headed in the course of a hand of cards, and you want to do something to help correct it, you can! Please try to remember to download the hand history as soon as that hand is finished. Once you download it, you can send it to me, and tell me what you think was wrong. With this information, I can rework the code to improve the bots.

For those who do not know about the hand history, that is just a small text file with a URL (link) in it. The link is to a "replayer" at World of Card Games. When you copy and paste the URL into a web browser, you will get a "replay" of that hand, showing who bid what, and how each card was played. All the cards will be shown face-up straight from the start. This link is an example of a "hand history".  You can click it to see how it works. But don't click it if you are currently playing a game at World of Card Games; it will not work, in that case.

You can only download the hand history if you are a registered user and signed in. Also, it's only available for 30 seconds after the hand finishes. So grab it quickly if you want to save it! To download it, click the little floppy disk icon that appears near your avatar. You can see that in the screenshot, below:

click the floppy disk icon to download hand history

The site was updated this morning to fix a few bugs.

In Gin Rummy, there was a bug which caused your deadwood to be optimized incorrectly when your opponent declared "Gin". This had been reported to me a few times, but I was never able to reproduce the issue. Thanks to Alagon for reporting it and also sending in the hand history! With the hand history, I was able to reproduce the issue, and then I could fix it pretty quickly. (If you want to download a "replayer" for the previous hand, click the little floppy disk image that appears near your avatar after the hand finishes.)

Marie-Michele has reported a few bugs with the Euchre bots, including hand histories. Those hand histories make it possible for me to fix the problems. Most recently, the bot was seen to delay in playing the right bower to take a trick. This has been fixed. The Euchre bots are now a little bit smarter, and will be better teammates (or opponents!). Thank you, Marie-Michele!

When the site was updated last weekend, a few bugs had crept into the build. These bugs have been fixed with this morning's update. Here is the bug list for those who might have noticed:

1. Your Elo rating was not viewable for some games in your stats panel, and also at unranked tables. It also didn't show up for unranked tables in the list of tables. No worries! Your Elo rating wasn't lost, but it could only be viewed at ranked tables.
2. Sometimes a table would vanish from the list of tables even though it still had seats available.

In addition, the Hearts bots have been informed of the new "Tournament Rules" Option, and they will now play a bit better at such tables.

Thank you to everyone who reported these bugs! You help to make the site better by bringing these problems to my attention.

An update was applied to the site this morning. You can now play ranked Hearts with the "Tournament Rules" Option. You will see both types of ranked Hearts games in the list of tables. A table with the "Tournament Rules" Option is annotated with "tr". The "Standard Rules" table is not annotated with anything special.

two possible games of Hearts

You will get a separate Elo rating for Hearts games played with these "Tournament Rules". If you play both types of games, you will see your Elo rating for each Option in your stats area for Hearts. Just click your stats link in the upper right corner, and click the "Hearts" radio button to see your Elo and Skill for the two ranked Hearts Options. Here's a view of my stats:

stats show Tournament Rules with (tr) next to them

I hope you have fun with the new Option!

The site is now back online! Sorry for the interruption in your games. This server update was mostly about some bug fixes. The most serious bug was one that caused a table to "freeze" - that problem should be fixed now. Thanks to those who reported the issue!

This morning, the site was updated to apply some modifications.

In Hearts, shooting the sun now only applies a penalty of 39 points to other players (as compared with the previous 52 points). It appears that a majority of players dislike the large sunshot penalty, based on a previous vote. This is an attempt at a compromise.

Also, a new Hearts Option is available. It is called "Tournament Rules". When using this new Option, the no-passing round is skipped, so you always get to pass cards. Further, if you are stuck with the Queen of Spades as your last card to play before hearts have been broken, you are not forced to lead with it. Instead, you can play a heart.

If you select "Either" for the "Tournament Rules" Option, you will be seated at either type of table. You can see what type of Options apply at your table by clicking on the "table info" link in the lower left corner of your table. Also, "Tournament Rules" tables will show up with a "tr" in the list of tables. Note: in order to "create" a table that uses Tournament Rules, you must select "Use Tourmament Rules" in the "New Hearts Option" panel, shown below. For the regular Hearts Options panel, set "Tournament Rules" to "Yes".

new Hearts Option "Tournament Rules"

Finally, in 3-5-8, the "Fan Cards Wider" Setting is now functional. You can fan your cards wider or narrower.