The British people, on the whole, have a long history of inventing games of all kinds, and the vast majority of them have disappeared into history, often with good reason, whilst many others still endure today. For all our Polish readers prepping to head to the UK on holiday, this will be a quick guide to the most common gambling card games still played in Britain, including some familiar titles and some you’ve likely never heard of.
Blackjack
More rooted in British history than poker, the game of blackjack, or 21, was almost certainly not created in Britain. However, the earliest available set of rules was. A 1600s set of rules for Vingt-Un (21 in French) is the earliest established rule set on record, and the game plays exactly the same today as it did back then.
As for the popularity of the game, it speaks for itself in just how easy it is to find across the country. London casinos feature the game prominently, and online casinos like Paddy Power have multiple options to play blackjack games online. It remains the most played gambling game in the country to this day.
Cribbage
Moving from the simplest card game to one of the most complex, Cribbage may have dropped in popularity over the past few decades but it’s still considered to be ‘Britain’s card game’. A round of Cribbage is played over three stages: deal, play and show.
There are different ways that players can score points at each stage, and while there isn’t enough space here to cover every single method of points scoring, it can involve some familiar parts like runs or pairs of cards. The target is to get to 121 points in total, marked on the special Cribbage board.
The game is still played today in certain communities, although this one you’re much less likely to find it online. It’s as much skill as luck, but the complexity can put more casual players off.
All-Fours
Following the trend of older British games, All-Fours is an example of a trick-taking game, which, while too complex to explain in full here, essentially involves playing cards to one-up or trump the previous card, with one suit each round becoming the trump suit.
Points are scored at the end of each round based on four different categories, such as highest trump or lowest trumps, with the name of the game coming from the goal of scoring in all four categories at once.
Unlike many card games, All-Fours and its modern variants Pitch and Don are primarily two-players games, although there are options for more players. In the North of Britain, there are still regular tournaments played, as well as versions as far away as the Caribbean and the U.S.
Final note
There are plenty more games here which could be mentioned, like Whist or Newmarket, but those have suffered much larger drops in popularity recently.
The most interesting thing about the British public though is that no matter how old any game is, if it was created in Britain then you can be sure that someone, somewhere in the country is still playing it to keep the old traditions alive.