Hoyle don't know the half of it

[muckefuck]

The other evening, I told monshu about this site, an amateur attempt to catalogue the most popular card games by nation and region. His response was to ask, "So what's the most popular card game in Azerbaijan?" Sadly, that is not one of those listed. But you can find entries for Turkey, Iran, and Armenia. And you will find listed which countries are strongholds of Sipa, Pitty Pat, and Voormsi, respectively.

As you might expect, North American regional variations owe a lot to the local settlement history--e.g. Boo-ray (a descendent of French bourré) in southern Louisiana, Sheepshead (Schafkopf) in Wisconsin, Hola in areas of Ukrainian settlement, etc. But there are also some surprises, like Literature, "an advanced game of the Go-Fish type that is played in Toronto but seems to have originated Tamil Nadu, India." And I'm still looking for an explanation of why Euchre is ubiquitous in most of Canada, the American Midwest and Northeast, the West Country and Channel Islands in the UK, and the Antipodes, and mostly unknown elsewhere.

Comments

[snousle.livejournal.com]

Funny, I was just thinking about that today. I grew up in an Italian town and my nonna used to play a game with her girlfriends that involved secretly knocking under the table so as to signal some situation in the game anonymously. Cannot remember what it was called and I've never seen it again.

[aadroma.livejournal.com]

Is it bad that the moment you mentioned Azerbaijan I thought of the fact that they're hosting Eurovision next year? ^o^

[vamapper.livejournal.com]

Growing up in Green Bay, we played Sheepshead. It's funny, but we used to pronounce it as if it were spelt Schaβkopp. I never heard of Euchre until I moved to Madison, and nobody played Sheepshead. I was surprised when I joined the Navy and met someone from Elmira, NY who also played Euchre. Didn't know they played it in Canada. I'm guessing there was a fair amount of emigration from the West Country and Channel Islands in the UK to those other areas. I know SW Wisconsin has a large Cornish influence from when it was originally settled by lead and zinc miners from that area.