Long distance card games

Why cards, and not something with explosions

Compared to action games, card games give just enough challenge to not get bored, but enough breathing room to focus on what the other person is saying. That is the entire case for them. You cannot hold a conversation through a shooter. You can hold one through a hand of Gin Rummy, and the game keeps going while you do.

Two of you gets one on one time: Gin Rummy, Crazy Eights, Speed. Four of you can double date with friends, which is Spades if two pairs want to be partners, or Go Fish and Rummy if you would rather everyone played for themselves.

Long distance couples go looking for a couples card game and find quizzes about each other. Many of those are fine and none of them is a game. The best game for couples is the one you both love already: a couple who played Gin Rummy before they lived apart does not need a new game, they need the old one on two screens.

Nothing here is trying to fix your relationship. The long distance relationship games that promise to deepen your connection are a different aisle, and the challenges of living apart are real ones a deck of cards does not solve. What a game does is give you something to do together, which on a flat evening is really the only thing that will help. You get competitive, you stop noticing the distance for an hour, and a game beside a call is better than a call that has run out of things to say.

A deck of cards, not a deck of questions

Search for long distance card games and almost everything that comes back is a physical box of conversation prompts for couples. Those decks are fine at what they do, which is ask you questions you would not otherwise ask. They are not a game, though, and somebody has to post them to you.

These are the ordinary games, with suits and ranks and a discard pile: Gin Rummy, Rummy, Go Fish, Crazy Eights, Speed and Spades. Nothing to buy, nothing to post, nothing new to learn if you both played these before you lived apart. Two people in two cities open a page each and the full deck is already on the table.

Connected by Cards is aiming to eventually have all the games you can play with a deck, or a few decks, of cards. Six of them play with friends today.

Two people, two places, one table

One of you opens the table and gets the link for the other seat. Drop it however you already talk: a message, an email, straight into the call you are already on. They open it, they are dealt in. No account, no app, no password to agree on, and neither of you has to be the technical one.

At a two-seat table you can turn voice on before you make it, and it stays off until you do. The audio goes straight between the two of you rather than through a server, and nothing is recorded. Or ignore it entirely and keep the video call you were already on: a card game in a browser tab sits beside a call rather than replacing it.

Why not just use an app? Because then you both have to have it. Here nobody installs anything and nobody makes an account, and your partner does not need the same phone, the same store or the same anything as you. One link, two browsers, and you are dealt in.

When one of you has to go to bed

Time zones end games early. A table here waits 48 hours, so an unfinished match is not lost because somebody had to sleep. Each game keeps a short list of the tables your browser is still sitting at, and you click back in through it.

That list is local to the browser that made or joined the table, because there are no accounts and so nothing to sync. Worth knowing before you switch devices: a match started on a laptop will not appear on your phone. Send yourself the link and it will.

Which game for which kind of call

Short call, or one of you is cooking. Speed, because there are no turns and a round is over fast. Or Crazy Eights, which you can explain in one sentence to somebody who has never played cards on a screen.

A whole evening, or a date night where the game is the date. Gin Rummy. A match to a hundred points is several rounds, and every round holds the same decision: knock now with ten deadwood, or push for gin and risk being undercut. It is the best of the six once you both know it, and it rewards two people who are competitive with each other.

More than two of you, in more than two places. Go Fish or Rummy, where the host picks two, three or four seats before the deal, so a family in three cities gets one link each. Go Fish is the fun one with a child in the room. Spades if there are exactly four of you.

A standing arrangement of one game a night is easy to keep, easier than a plan that needs you both free at the same hour, and it is one of the few things you get to do at the same moment. Dates like that create a reason to come back tomorrow. It is free, give or take an occasional ad we will try to keep discreet.