Capturing Cards


This page is part of a series of pages that classifies games by their objective and does not give any specific rules to any games. Please check out the rest of our site for more in-depth pages on gaming rules.

These games consist of a particular objective involving the capture of cards. These games tend to fall under the trick-taking games or fishing games categories.

This objective comes in many forms. Sometimes the goal revolves around capturing as many cards as possible, sometimes you want to capture as few as possible and in some other games the goal may be to capture a certain number of cards.

These games may also have point values attached to cards meaning there might also be an objective of gathering points by capturing cards. There are also games that require players to capture certain tricks to win.

Capturing Cards

These games are almost always regular trick-taking games and are some of the most popular games around the world.

Not Capturing Cards

These types of games are harder to come by and fall under two categories. Either the objective is to capture no cards at all or its to capture as few as possible.

No cards

These games usually have bidding as a mechanism. An example is the point-trick game Skat.      

As Few as possible

This is usually only found in certain bidding games when all players have passed.

Capturing a Certain Number of Cards

These games usually involve players betting on the number of tricks they think they can win and trying to get that exact number of tricks.

Capturing Many Points

Almost all fishing games and point-trick games fall under this category.

Capturing Few Points

These games involve cards with penalty points attached to them, the goal being to not capture them if possible. A common example of the is Hearts.

Capturing a Certain Number of Points

This is a rare type of game where players bid on exact points and try to win by getting as close to their goal as possible. These are only found in point-trick games.

The Last Trick

This is another group of games that comes in two versions. Either the goal is to capture the last trick or to not capture the last trick.

Mixed Objectives

Some games use multiples of the above objectives. These games typically have cards with both negative and positive point values.